because she had a desire to eat her fingertips and to chew the filaments that infiltrated all the little telephones in all the little houses of all the people of the wired city. because the filaments had swift magical properties allowing them to penetrate the ears of those who listened too long to their own voices, or who listened to prophetic media blitzes propagated by charismatic priests whose revolutionary zeal outran their own sexual proclivities. because she had lovers who shaved within an inch of their lives every morning so that they would appear clean, pure and unstrung while the village recreated itself upon the bodies of ancient children; and the mothers lit candles that smelled of petroleum and medicated bandages and set their candles on altars made of old candy and all the melted candles lit for all the ghosts whose burned faces melted into a desert junkyard of pink and brown prophylactic limbs and hands; and fathers turned out their children and fed them to their burials in transit in the sky, without ritual and in silence; children who in life were deemed briefly gods to obey voices in the wires hidden in their knuckles, implanted in their silver teeth and glistening even in their golden armour; because there was "reality" everywhere to be had, and everyone knew this and privately longed to be surreal, and longed furthermore to be loyal to their leads and to the sheep that they tended in the gated pastoral communities of their dreams. because this is the code to be cracked, the recipe for our daily fiber ration, a heavy loaf made of reality dough, kneaded with small wires, shrapnel, butterflies and menstrual blood, seasoned with skin grafts and eyelashes, scalpels, barbie dolls and the email of the dead, cc'd to no one, justified by prayer.