Frog-Shaped

In the spring I had found a dead frog in a watering can.

Actually it was my birthday – whether this is true or not, it makes good narrative sense. Poking around in the garden on my birthday, finding a dead frog floating bloated in a watering can that had been left outside over winter and filled up with rain water. The drowned frog – pale, pink; its belly swollen.

I tipped it out onto an empty planter. Using a fork, I flipped ‘him’ over. To get a better look, for some reason. Basic curiosity I guess. I guess. We always have to know what’s going on, get a better look – even at things that disgust us. I, we us. I’m not sure which people this includes, which ones I’m trying to include.

I was really careful, the way I moved the dead frog – I had some idea that I might poke it with something too sharp and it would explode. It looked full to bursting with liquid. Imagine that exploding up and all over. Happy Birthday.

So I buried it, there in the planter, covered it over with soil, whatever had been used previously to grow x, y or the other, I don’t remember.

*

And now it is summer.

I never planted anything in that planter during the spring and now the weeds are making hay in the sunshine, pushing up out of the soil, away from whatever is left of that dead frog now. And last night I dreamt there were pure white molluscs living in our walls, growing like funghi in a hollow I accidentally discovered by disturbing a large chunk of plaster. So I guess it goes to show that kind of thing could happen?

I awoke – there was either a woodpigeon in one of the trees outside or perhaps a man making woodpigeon impressions, lets assume whichever of these makes more narrative sense.

I went back to examine in greater detail the weeds growing out of that planter. Now that I looked at what they were trying to push out into the world – on this quickly warming summer morning – I could see that on the end of each of the green shoots was a pearlescent orb of emerging-being, a micro dew drop in the morning light but unmistakably – lets say so, lets say unmistakable, lets trust that I am correct or at least that I know what is necessary, what is needed to land this narrative… lets just go with it and say yes, unmistakably, lets say they were unmistakably – frog-shaped.