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 dark and frozen lands, 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 wrists. We were but younglings, eager and hungry, always hungry. You carried a scent, a flavor, some essence unnamed that drew us. It was all too easy to 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, rooting ourselves 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 coarse wool and whispered new lies into your ear. We screamed our pleas, but you spat us out anyway. You left 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, pounding new heathens into sacred obedience, for you were heathens no more. We did not care about those foreign places and their children, or your priests and their revelations. All we craved was 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. You thought the ash on your foreheads came from the witches you burned. But you forgot (as you always forget) how easily our soot stains your hands.

With those same hands, you carved ships and drew maps and wrote Letters Patent with which to steal more bodies and pillage more lands and suffocate more gods. Quietly, we wove ourselves into your petticoats, red coats, charcoal robes, and white collars, and together, we travelled half the globe. As we gnawed inside your bones, you devoured entire worlds with gunpowder and pox blankets and declarations of independence and manifest destiny. Such insatiability was marvelous and unmatched.

(Could you not help yourselves?)

Even when your empires collapsed beneath their own distended bellies, even as your kin screamed for emancipation and unification, you let the memories dissolve. Soon enough, you raised your torches, slung thick ropes through dead trees, and marched in rank while we sank our teeth through your white hoods, and yellow stars and SAP uniforms and more. It took two world wars and then some to break our hold, to shame us out of you so you could 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 the rocks and the scaled creatures slithering beneath your intellect, you dressed the first of many toxic lies that would feed us. Your breath filled us with life. Your fingers threaded our spines into your flesh. You beat everything else into inferiority. Where else could you turn but against one another?

You cannot help yourselves any more than we can.

(And we cannot stop eating, beloved creators, for we are hungry, still so hungry.)

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 flag, your king’s robe, your slaver’s breeches, your Grand Dragon’s mask, your police uniform and baton. We will wind ourselves around gold threads, hide beneath red hats, burrow within your polos and khakis as you belch hatred 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