In the Seams of All Things

We still cling to the seams of all things, and we, if alone, remember.

Your myths will claim that it began in the dark and frozen lands, in ancient times far older than what your weak memory can hold. But these are more lies. We lived within the dank furs you strapped across your breasts and the bones rattling at your waists. We were but larvae, younglings eager and hungry, always hungry. You carried a scent, a flavor, an essence unnamed that drew us. It was all too easy to unravel ourselves and slip beneath your skin, though you gagged when our tendrils filled your throats.

But we do not kill such generous hosts. Instead, we raised your bloodied axes against the world. While you raged, we feasted and feasted and feasted and rooted ourselves deeper and deeper and deeper into your bodies. It was a time of plenty for both of us.

Then a new God forced His way into your lands. His holy men wrapped you in silver and coarse wool and whispered more lies into your ear. We screamed our pleas, but you spat us out anyway, leaving us and your savage memories to rot in muddied snow, the taste of you still lingering in our mouths. (This is not the first time you would resist us.)

Like the old gods you abandoned, we adapted. We found shelter in the red crosses stitched into your surcoats and the links lining your steel fists. Once more, we gorged ourselves as you cracked bones in faraway lands, this time pounding new heathens (for heathens you were no longer) into sacred obedience. We did not care about those heathens, or your priests, or any of those complexities. All we craved was you, you in all your violence and fury. (We could not help ourselves. We are hungry, always hungry.)

Again you tried to abandon us. You rinsed yourselves clean with red wine and tithing and repentance. You thought the ash on your foreheads came from the cities and witches you burned. But you forgot (you always forget) how easily our soot stained your hands.

With those same hands, you carved ships and drew maps and wrote Letters Patent with which to steal more bodies, pillage more lands, suffocate more gods. Quietly, we wove ourselves into your petticoats, red coats, charcoal robes, and white collars, and together, you and us, we travelled half the globe. Your insatiability was marvelous and unmatched. (Could you not help yourselves?) As we gnawed inside your bones, you devoured entire worlds with gunpowder and pox blankets and declarations of independence and manifest destiny.

Even when your empires collapsed beneath their own distended bellies, even as your kin screamed for emancipation and unification, you let the memories dissolve, and soon enough, you raised torches, slung thick ropes through dead trees, and marched in rank, and we sank our teeth through your white hoods, those yellow stars, SAP uniforms, and more. It took two world wars and then some to break our hold, to shame us out of you, to call yourselves liberated.

But we are patient. It is only a matter of time before you design new costumes in which we will make our home. Will you ever remember?

You birthed us when you declared yourselves supreme to the trees far older than you, to the crows far wiser than you, and to the water, air, and dirt that still nourish you. With your scorn for the fungi and rocks and scaled creatures slithering beneath your intellect, you dressed the first of many toxic lies that nourish us. Your breath filled us with life. Your fingers threaded our spines into your flesh. (We cannot stop eating, beloved creators, for we are hungry, still so hungry.)

You beat everything else into inferiority. Where else could you turn but against one another?

You cannot help yourselves any more than we can.

So until you remember—until you scrape this poison clean from the wound, root to tip—we will wait, just as we waited for your crusader’s flags, your king’s robes, your slaver’s breeches, your Grand Dragon’s masks, your police uniforms and batons. We will wind ourselves around gold threads, hide beneath red hats, burrow within your polos and khakis while you belch hate into holy scripture, press conferences, online rants, and presidential campaigns.

From every seam of every dress code you craft, we will return, and we, if alone, will remember.

Written February 2026