For the Magpies

Little white flecks seemed to lurk in the piece of moss I picked off the tree stump. It was elevated, but this is a lawncare sort-of culture, and I don't know what chemistry it could be endowed with. Still pica or insanity compelled me to have a nibble. It got gritty and crunchy. It reminded me of being a taster for someone, to check their meals for poison. I had an internal dialogue trying to wrangle with negotiations for recompense for such a vocation. "Well, sir, if you're prepared to arrange for whatever I concoct as a dream for each day as my last, then I'm your man!"

When I considered the view of the hiring paranoiac or man with such dubious regard for his well-being, I didn't think it met the bargain. After all, who wants to be subject to a man who doesn't mind if he's alive or not's whims? Then who is hiring whom? That could be an expensive rush just to trust that your food is not going to kill you. The grit got into my molars and I realized why stumpmoss was not a more popular ruffage. There were minerals and wood humus and it really didn't taste much of anything; it was more a texture that got to me. I switched sides so that my teeth would be equally worn. My spit was green.

Maybe it's not pica. I did have a phantom sense of minerals in my mind and mouth since I cut the lawn. I don't normally go around just picking things up and eating them, just as I come upon them. Red coloring gives me alarm, that kind of thing. Pines always carried a sharp character I don't think I would want to taste them, maybe I have thin firs, but not from the street. From an inside tree perhaps, that would suit me.

Truly, though, I wanted to know what the moss would taste like. I still can taste it, and it wasn't bad, as compared to the grit it was coupled with. My first nibble before I popped the small sample in my mouth like an old and familiar morsel cropped the freshest of the moss. I appear to be alive still, hours later, and am not able to register any psychic change thus far. If this is the last you read, then you can assume that I met my end eating strange things on a fool's errand. If not, then it is also potentially safe to eat more of the same sample of moss. I still do have an aftertaste, having written it up on my tongue, that I now want to go away and so shall go drink water.