Did I ever tell you about the time when I found a corpse?
Did I ever tell you that I touched it?
I don’t know, it was laying there in the grass
And I touched it

You know, touching doesn’t actually involve touching
There is no actual contact involved
There is an electromagnetic repulsion between the electrons of the atoms that make up my fingers and those that make up, well, in my case, that corpse

So all we ever feel is electromagnetic force
Never the other whose touch we seek

And it’s not that I don’t believe this
Sometimes I’m pretty sure I feel my skin’s abjection to everything that’s other, even to whatever is self
But when I put my finger against the cold wettish surface of its body
I’m sure it merged with my own

I don’t remember if I felt his suffering or if I got relieved of mine
Are my actions lacking compassion?
I don’t want to impose my human values onto the ontology of the world
But I think I did when I decided that probably
He enjoyed it as well