No one ever found him. Worms turned his whole body into the nutrient shit that plants need to grow. The plastic that had shared space with his flesh stayed. It sat still or traveled elsewhere. Where he had long since become indiscernible, it remained itself. It was outside of natural time, being that nature had exiled. Plastic was what had been severed from life, transmuted into another phase of existence beyond the metabolic processes that meant living. The accreting mass of plastic was nature’s obliterative tendency beginning to outweigh its reproductive one. Nature was poisoned by its own urges. Asphyxiated under the weight of desire. Life fumbled the bag hugely when it incidentally or maybe inevitably made those configurations of organs wants and needs that it was totally unprepared for.
Uma Payne is a writer. She lives in Brooklyn with her girlfriend and their seven fish.