camp/All Common Sense, That is

table of contents

***

camp

To shapeshift,

beginner witches

require a diagram–

and by diagram

I mean,

pages of drawings about what to do with all your organs

and pages more about how to make new organs

and pages more about colors and textures of skin and eyes and tongues

and pages more about how to shape your mind

to tap into the magic in the air

most accessible to words and runes–

and from these diagrams

as a beginner witch

I learned that

shapeshifting requires

making runes

as raised ridges

on your brain

to activate

the changes in your body.

And normal human brains

can’t change their shape

to make runes

in the first place

so Clarissa and I–

during our first class on shapeshifting–

we did surgery

on each other.

We traced

shaky summoning circles

on snakeskin paper

and shaved the curly locks from the backs of each other’s heads

and we blew on the bunyip blood ink

to activate the ring

then held it to the back of each other’s heads

and she did mine first

and I yelled

cuz it hurt;

the summoning ring

raised the tissue on the back of my brain

in a rune

to give me power

to consciously shape the shape of my own mind.

I didn’t

immediately

die

or lose crucial functioning

like eyesight

or coordination

so I put my paper

on the back of her head

and she hissed

but didn’t yelp like I had

and then

in our shared

rooms,

desks and beds and rug

littered with

diagrams

of chimpanzees,

we shapeshifted

but it took a dozen tries

to form the right rune shapes on our minds

to actually magic ourselves into chimps

and not blobby imps

or not just

erase the initial rune in the first place

and thus require

another magical surgery.

Now, though,

shapeshifting comes easy

and my brain’s flexible.

Words write themselves, it seems like,

over the surface of my cortexes,

but it’s too flexible sometimes,

like,

camping in the yellow cove

as a tree

who would think

Brisbane

had never been real–

the populated city, Brisbane,

from one to two centuries ago?

Okay, maybe many would doubt their memories

of centuries past,

wondering if they’d made cities up

that hadn’t existed,

but who would decide

to rebuild it

exactly as it’d once been

in their memory

just to prove

it was real at some point?

(ha, my memory is right–

now, anyway.)

And who would build it

without actually determining

if the city ruins

those osprey eyes saw

had been Brisbane

or some other place?

And who would build it

by deciding

to give all the trees in the forest

brains of their own

with runes

to shapeshift into people,

unless she was a witch

whose mind

had lost

all sense

of normatropism?

***

All Common Sense, That is

Normatropism (noun),

that neurological knowing

of how to grow upward

into a common, small talking individual,

with a house

and cooked food

and running water

and electricity

and internet

and social media

and friends

and clothes that match

and a face that looks nice

and a job

you go to in a car

and shoes

that don’t look like your feet

and soap

making your hair fall out

and digital money

in the bank

and an instinct to scoff

at made up words

like normatropism

and contropism

and witches

and demons