A wilted tip from a head of lettuce, with six spines down the length of a lumpy, pockmarked, bulbous, vaguely pyramidal surface, round at the bottom and then coming to a point, the yellow green of dried grass at the bottom fading to white toward the tip, dull and waxy skin, wavy, as unpredictably formed as the bottom of the ocean. This is the gourd on the table next to me. A cross between an avocado and vomit. Like a miniature spaceship sent to harbinger the coming of the Great Old Ones. A seed pod for the forest of suicides. A three-dimensional record of everything in the universe, readable only by a race of aliens with a sense of perception I can't describe in language. A melted marshmallow that gained sentience and is forming itself into the object of its fondest desire, a starfish. A bad omen. Corporealized moonlight. The magical item sacrificed in the creation of the new album by The Fall. A carving made by a squid to represent its god. What's left of a prehistoric mountain that's been chiseled down by erosion until it is nearly nothing. Butterfly wings captured by a camera that records emotion as well as light.

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