I saw that I was a kiwi bird with paper masking me to appear as a mallard duck.  And over time I became a mallard duck.  It was as easy as allowing the soft air to hold a piece of paper of the long green neck of a duck up to my kiwi beak.  Everyone could see that I was a kiwi bird with a 2D duck facade.  But it became truer and truer.  My bone structure and my musculature reconfigured.  It wasn’t a falseness.  It was as simple as becoming.  I wondered if I was losing something essential by relinquishing the kiwi in me.  But I could feel I wanted to be a duck anyhow.  Ducks have families.  Ducks are everywhere, all over the world.  Ducks have progeny.  Ducks have so many progeny that we don’t concern ourselves with making sure they’re fucking and re-making themselves.  Is it terrible to remake oneself?  Is it terrible to continue the organic matter of oneself into other beings?  Tell me you don’t want anymore swans and I’ll tell you I once watched a swan strike a real-life cartoon metal trash can lid, held up and hoisted by a zoo employee who was being driven by another zoo employee in a golf cart.  They had done this many times before.  The dumb swan had wandered too far into the walking areas and was poking at children.  Now, the swan was to be led back to its pond but the most efficient way was to make target of a clattering pain.  The swan can’t resist beating on it, beaking it with the aggression of an overtired child.  So tell me you wouldn’t stay back and watch too: this slow and satisfying dance of the zoo person smilelessly leading the swan away.  But I turned around and saw my friends were already down at the elephant exhibit.  I had to do a terrible run to catch up with them.  Or, I could decide to take my time and waddle back.  I knew only certain things could be said when I wasn’t near enough to hear them.  Only certain transmissions are forged in my absence.  And so did I waddle, every so often looking back to see if I was a point equidistant to the swan and his trash lure and my friends possibly sharing factoids on the living, possibly asking questions about the dead. Possibly I am the swan.  And wouldn’t you want me to be multiplied, as long as I promise not to attack an innocent toddler because I’m feeling so tall-necked and so pretty?