He suckled until he was two. That was his existence. Mother’s milk. Straight from the body. Warm. Residual. It took residence in him, gave him substance. Bought him life, brought him strength and posture and words and clear eyes and scent and pin-tinkling sound and all the other pieces of life that until then remained chaotic and messy like tornado-spun teenage angst. He suckled until he bit. Then the milk resisted. Became limited. Eventually dried up. He was removed to the world. From his former. Ready to waddle walk run spill onto the plains of this fast moving earth.

When he was two, he grew hungry. Brought an apple to his lips and wondered at the taste. Eyes tipped around a room full of unnamed things. So generic. Things. Things. Things. He tried to name them all but they came so fast. This. That. The other. Beyond the apple there was an orange. And a pear. A peach. A pineapple. Kiwis. Plums. Bananas. Cherries. Strawberries. Raspberries. Grapes. A lemon. A lime. A pomegranate. All the fruit in the world, all the fruit ever grown from fronds, leaves, roots, and stems wandered into his mouth as victims induced and feverish. No room and yet the space grew. Accepted everything. Some gave him the runs. Some gave him gas. All gave him pleasure. Even the sour. The acrid. The acidic. They all had a taste. The taste. The sheer joy of taste.

At four, the foods had run out. All things great and small were gone. Meats. Cheeses. Vegetables. Everything grown lovingly and then butchered. All that was meant for consumption was exactly that. Consumed. Surely they could make more and more and more and more. There was no end to their agricultural industry. Smoke stacks and dung heaps could spring from the earth as quickly as dandelions. That is where he went. To the dandelions. They felt like lemon yellow on his small tongue. A waxy colored sun on the rakish texture of construction paper. The stands had a milky center. Sticky. Parasitic but even. He ate each one slowly and with thought. Chewing even as the neighbor’s dog poured disgusted glances through the chain link. Then it was the other yards. All of them in turn. Gardens weeded into edenic beauty. Gone to perfection.

Five turned to nine and he was off. A given morning. The ground wet from a late rain. He stumbled in the lawn while searching out the unpicked straggling spring flowers. He planted himself face-down in the moist soil. His mouth open. Free will. The teeth set to dirt. Grass. Rain-soaked bugs. He chomped the earth. Gulped it. Forced it down the filling station of his gut. Willing cells took the earth and churned it as butter in wooden barrels. It made its own bi-products. Productivity. It gave to him more than he had expected. It fed him freely. Energized his mind. Cramped his body in tangy sores. Ate him as he fed. Grew him. Built him. Deliciously.

In years, it was more than ritual. Piles of earth disappeared from parks. Natural areas. Playgrounds. He was a bulldozer that mulched. He took earth and gave shit. Great heaping mounds of shit. His stomach grew grizzly. Fervent. He needed more. Moved onto cement. Asphalt. Streetlights and abandoned cars. The chemicals fueled a certain need that although nameless required attention. Sought his mind. Spoke to him in unearthly tones. Bite. Chew. Swallow. Shit. He was eating whole blocks of the neighborhood structure. Dirt roads would have to do. Bike trails would have to be muddy ruts. Things were disappearing down his gullet. Alarmist cries ensued. People stared. Animals cringed. The world went on.

Time passed to a point. The boy was anxious, aghast. He reared up on great horse-sized legs and kicked out windows, shingles, doors, and decks. The houses were moving. Sinking into pitted earth and Swiss-cheese streets. The homes themselves met their consumptive end. He found taste in their termite wood and pungent worn warmth. He ate onward. Through blocks of friends and neighbors, not bothering to check who was home at the time. It became a game of surprise. It was a fashionable taste to find the chewy center in a hollow of carpet, nails, and thin metal sheets. That very delicate center propelled him on. Sent him growing further. Farther. Bigger. Larger. No longer restricted. No longer delicate himself. No longer driven. Simply hungry. Needing more and more and more.

Soon after, it blossomed into something beautiful. The world was enormously grateful. The boy’s charm came. He pinched industrial zones between gargantuan fingertips and bullied them down with a sprinkle of big business and a side of government. Armies. WMDs. Slow moving chemical plants roving the earth in search of finality and perpetual history. All of it gone. Guns. Bombs. Drugs. Pushed down an ever-growing stomach. A boy’s fit to the world’s issues. AIDS. Famine. Poverty. Hate. Disease. Everything. Eaten. Ate. Gone.

He was no longer feeling strength or agility or power. Balance or love. Center or focus. His pipes were clogging and groaning. Pitching. Yawning for gasped air thick with humidity. He was leaving blood as much as shit everywhere he went. People grew less than grateful. Communes disappeared as a hopeful compliment to warlords. Great stores of penicillin inside mouthfuls of racism and pollution. Nothing worked. Nothing helped. The boy was intestinally warped. Internally weak. Struggling. Too much was too much was too much.

His last bite was a corner of desert untouched by human hands. No metal. No glass. No emotions. Just sand heat wind air. A pocket of clear water beneath miles of earth. A root stilled by hot frozen environment. And when the boy took this last bite, a sacrilegious sacrament, his heart quit beating, bunched with the dry timber of cottonwoods and the earth tones of a U. S. tank battalion. Warships swished inside a dead stomach next to puppies and people, gas tanks clinked hollowly against Picassos and earthworms. Everything by everything. No longer a need for separation. A pile of shit waiting to be shat. Time the only untouched element. Time alone left standing. Ticking. Onward. Ever. Onward.