We have sealed rooms already contaminated by our thought, our observation. Setting up a lab in the midst of our imprint. Did you put your face shield on? Which is nothing more than surface and overflow. Did you pocket the telescope arm of your action, arson, sequestration? What we found was more than ancient echo, spotted horses or starfish symmetry. One of the things that won’t tame, one of the things that won’t translate, won’t cooperate, won’t draw itself because the mirror will never be invented, because exit signs, escape hatches, exit ramps will never be invented. We were already there at the source of contamination. The altar was the first machine. Always already irritable for the more, the making means of, the fallen soft ceiling of spores the size of whims, the most auspicious antlers as candelabra, as time capture, as whole flash fiction. We didn’t set out to study cave art or hang ourselves from the cave mouth. The guts of the question contained the bacterial answers. One of the things that won’t be rendered innocent, innocuous, one of the things that won’t be renditioned. You can’t draw yourself out of the rock, the footprints collapse into deeper footprints. We have sealed the rooms. There will be no further questions.Microbiome first appeared in Cutbank, 2013
