Fiddlehead Ferns

Olive seashells in the air you can eat. The very inner of the inner ear in the breeze. Last night my son dreamt about falling out of trees. I had almost forgotten that we were simians. The fiddlehead turns on itself but only ever in love. Green cinnamon roll, a snake too small to hunt anyone. Curled in like my son’s fingers, his fists. More beautiful than a spider fern, spun-in island, moldy tongue of a hippopotamus, the eye of the forest. When my son wakes up screaming I don’t pick him up right away. I tell him where he is and who I am. At night all the fiddlehead wants to do is sleep. When I sleep I dream about death adders curling around his soft body, all of us making the same kinds of sounds.