Whether The Elk Knows

On Monday, two little children are switched at birth. The pretty Swedish one goes on to be a film star, a dancer, lover to directors and collector of rocks. The smooth ones, gray and striated. She carries them in her pocket, bits of the outside when she is lying on the couch, unable to get up.

The other one is mud, this girl, holding this or that boy in her arms for a moment, stamping through wooded trails, thinking of all the pine needles and fallen black leaves that go beneath her feet. Of things beyond her vision that chase her through the woods.

They both think of places, worlds where they can zip off their skin and be real. There are four-leaf clovers more real than them! A headless horse who runs alone on beaches and up mountains! They're drinking coffee and debating with themselves the necessary nature of sexual energy; all the while, they can watch stars lifting hairs from their arms, and the moon tweedle-dum in a perfectly blue sky.

Both girls remember building rockets. It was easy, then. The soon-to-be film star drew it over an electrical outlet, in red crayon, shooting up a white wall. For which she was punished. Or wished she was punished. Mud girl stuck a stick in the dirt, wrapped limp weeds around it.

An elk hunt is occurring in one part of the world, and in the other, an art fair. Both are the same, and involve knives and early morning, when the world is black and still and resting in deep, heavy breaths. They look out windows, watching men leave, and drink coffee. They build their rockets again. This time with finesse, with dancing moves that are too complicated to reproduce here. With fingers caked with mud. The outside world, the forest, is inside them, and it's the perfect place to jump off.

Dawn wraps them in a shawl, sorts them out, replaces them with little human children who are still crawling. Now they have found their mechanical inner selves, the alien gears of who they are. One holds it all to her, spins in luxurious convolutions through the sky.

The other girl falls back to earth, called by a dying elk who is the voice of a husband.

She falls back to earth, falls, falls, falls.

Stars explode and on Tuesday, two little children are switched at birth.