there are things inside us, varied substances that we don’t mean to ingest but are carried into our bodies with our food and drink, plastics, microplastics are within all of us, it is so ubiquitous, look around, there is no avoiding it, our bodies can be measured in percentages, about sixty percent is water, one percent is calcium, a small but measurable percentage is plastic, not even counting the bodies with pacemakers, joint replacements, IUDs, everyone has plastic inside, also iron, when we cook with cast iron pans we add a bit of iron to the body, and on the molecular level there are other substances, some natural, most artificial, that tag along every time we take a drink or shovel food into our hungry mouths, rubber, glass, stone, fabrics, dirt, dust, bacteria, they all hitch a ride on the sustenance lane, we contain multitudes, perhaps Walt meant this literally, everything we have touched, ingested, with every breath, every swallow, we become our ‘immediate setting’, every person we have loved or simply shared space with, their cells are now a part of us, a living history, a walking, talking documentary, there is proof that we existed, here, there, every place we’ve been, carried until death to be burned or buried with us, think of one moment, a brief moment that nags the memory, it is not just the brain that stores the dim recollection, the body actually contains within its tissues a physical memento, a molecule, a cell, a subatomic particle, of what had been, even when memory lacks, its substance is there, waiting, just there and waiting

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Michael L Sevy is a writer and composer from Vermont. His work has been published in 3:AM Magazine, minor literature[s], Burning House Press and underscore_magazine. He was the leader of punk bands Cold Dogs in the Courtyard and Bonus Marchers. You can find him on twitter at @MichaelSevy and bsky at @mlsevy.bsky.social.