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Sheep

“Putain,” one of the Siamese twins angrily whispers to the other, mute from birth and, like me, a first time guest in the museum that exhibits only animals as we see them in dreams. Her knee touches mine as we sit on a bench and watch sheep after sheep jump over a hedge. The sheep are sheared into shapes like paints thrown from a short distance against a canvas. While I wait for the talking twin to fall asleep, I imagine what the sheep resemble: An explosion of honey in a beehive, milkweed grown without the influence of gravity, an orchid with lungs. But in the end it’s me whom the old guard wakes: “We’re closing now,” he says, and clips my tie with a hole-puncher, before sleep-drunk I’m led to the exit.

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From: Forty-One Animals (2005)