Do not broach me, I’m neither a subject to be dissected, nor a thing to be crossed, I rival any concept of evil you’ve conjured in nightmares, and I fear no mortal, nor death...I escaped the multitude of lies and hands, I lived to see the sunrise beyond the barrel of the gun at my forehead, I walked from the ring of dead eyes corralling me in a basement...I am fury and fire, a bastard child of pensive silence and tenacious fight...I’ve no time for a life that reduces me to a question or corners me for safe keeping...I can identify empty words with pretty facades by the lack of action that follows, and I pity the lie and quit the liar...I often need to escape into nature, to balance and heal, I feel the crawl beneath my skin, the need to commune with mountains and conjure storms, to fight the urge to fly from ledges, to halt my steps as I take shelter, admiring the bolts of lightning that resonate within my rib cage...I write my name in earth and ash and blood, I welcome the confusion of masses unable to define my origins, incapable of classifying my existence...I laugh freely, weep secretly, howl continuously...chants sound in faint whispers at my back, ephemeral voices lure me towards understanding, and there’s simply no turning back from what the rabbit foretold, from the words branded upon me at the birth rite...{lusus naturae}

E. A. O'Connell. November 2019.