It’s a day like any other when the urge strikes you. The dishes are all neatly put away in their spots. You’ve walked your well-behaved dog, the same manic loop around the neighborhood as yesterday. You know it’s a mile because you measured it. The house plants have all received the perfect amount of water and sunlight, each in their own optimally sized terra cotta containers. In the middle of it all is you—fresh from the shower, legs shaved, hair clean, soft linen clothes covering your body stylishly.

It’s the bra that does it. The underwire digs into your ribcage, restricting your breath and your movement. It’s part of your human uniform. Without it, you may not fit so seamlessly into the expectations of your manicured life. But still, you cannot breathe. So you take off your bra. And its good, but it’s not ENOUGH. You look at your dog with her collar and wonder if she feels the same way. You take it off. How will a stranger know her name? Who cares. She looks wilder now, and so do you. But she doesn’t run away this far. You imagine what it would be like to sprint on all fours, to have a body designed to chase and tear and hunt. To have a beautiful, wild, hairy body. But you are not an animal. You are a human being with self-reflection, and philosophy, and religion for what that’s worth.

You don’t remember the last time you enjoyed having a body, so you decide to make a fire in your backyard. You’ve had the fire pit for a while but never made it. The soft black tarp is there to use it. Your dog comes with you. No leash, just following the instinct of what it is to be a human and a dog sitting around a fire. She hangs closer than you thought she would.

And so you sit down to make a fire. The meaning behind how to do this should be your birthright, but it’s not immediately obvious. You find some good sticks and some leaves, some H-E-B bags that work well as long-burning kindling. It’s cheating, you think, but you don’t say it out loud. No one is there to hear you anyway. The modern kindling has given way to a real fire. The wood smokes aggressively, and you wrestle several plastic bags from the fire. Real wood is an ecosystem just like anything else. You sit and stare into the fire for a long time. How long? You can’t say exactly. You sit there barefoot, braless, sweating. In the fire, glowing logs become distant caves and lava flows. Entire villages huddle around this fire between one log and the next.

It is good, but it is not enough. It is at the fire that you split in two. Your mind hovers at the well-contained and tended fire in your urban backyard. But your body moves on its own. You strip naked, just skin, warm from the fire, hair, and muscle and organs and bone. And you walk, and keep walking. Just one foot in front of another, until you are outside the limits of your city, until you don’t know where you are or indeed who you are. You are just a body in motion.

Darkness begins to fall around you in this unknown landscape. You are surrounded by trees now, tall and beautiful. But without light to see, you feel them scratching your skin. They have no regard for you, your human modesty. You feel branches on your face, your breast, your stomach, your legs. Even as they scratch your delicate, untested skin, you hear them snapping. You leave marks on them as they leave marks on you. You push your body onward, reveling in sensation without thought.

At some point you hear the sound of a splash at the same time as your feet feel cool and wet. In the dark, you still see nothing but the new sensation is thrilling. With each step this cool, refreshing feeling creeps further up your body—ankles, then knees, thighs, hips. You stop there to revel in the movement of this new surrounding. Unlike the trees, which touched you only when you moved, you can stand still as this washes past and around you. It is incredible, but it is not enough.

And so you keep walking, and the cool, refreshing moving thing recedes back down your body—hips, then thighs, knees, ankles, gone. You are left feeling bare without it, though your legs seem less caring now, scraped all over by leaves, your skin is covered in scratches and bruises. Your feet are strong and calloused and your eyes have a wild ferocity even you wouldn’t recognize. Your human body is more animal than you could have hoped. You breathe fully and deeply, your spine expands and contracts fluidly.

Suddenly you stumble into a gap in the trees. Moonlight shines down brightly, blinding you as your eyes adjust. The hair on the back of your neck stands on end, alerting you to one very important thing: you are being observed. It is strange after so long alone with the trees.

You step further into the light and the blurred edges of your observer take shape. A man stands before you, ageless and with an aura of power about him. His dark hair curls joyfully around his face, and his golden eyes seem almost to be laughing, though they take you in with a tone of curiosity. He is not often visited here any longer, but he had not forgotten his purpose.

Slowly and deliberately, he holds out his hand to you—an offer. Miles away your mind screams that the dishes will be dirty, the plant will grow weeds, your boss will fire you, and what about your savings? But still, you take his hand and begin to dance.

His feet are sure and strong, his hands hold you skillfully. Your heart thuds loudly in your ears and your breath heaves like it did your whole way here. This is no gentle ballroom number but a wild, ecstatic movement, pushing the limits of your physical being. There is no music, only the pounding of your feet and the sound of your flesh catching up to your bones. You realize you are smiling when your cheeks begin to ache. And still you dance.

You dance until your body gives out, and you tumble to the soft grass in a pile of limbs. There is nothing left of you now but the kernel of truth at your center. This strange man stripped the rest away. And you let him.

Here in the wood, by the light of the moon, you become acutely aware of how edible you are. This human body, stripped bare, rubbed raw but clean and vital.

The walk back feels infinitely longer now and the sun is rising as you climb your own fence and approach the smoking embers that were your fire. Your dog barks at you but settles down as you smell different but the same. You imagine she welcomes you back, curious to hear what you learned and knowing she can never experience it herself.

And there, alone, in your own backyard with the sun in the sky and twigs in your hair, you begin to dance. It is enough.