Albatross

Albatross arcs across the wall like a wing unfurled, or a spine pulled taut — a pale body of stuffed stocking that branches into limbs ending in yellow medical tubing, each frayed mouth splaying into red yarn like severed veins or reaching roots. At the left, a pink satin pod has split open, spilling a knotted mass of white plush shot through with red yarn: the creature's soft interior turned out, tender and exposed. Peach strands drip from the seams like something still forming, still leaking.

This is the first Albatross, conjured from generative AI — Bedtime Stories for Oankali prompts dreaming a xeno-organism that I then made flesh, the recursive loop closing as image becomes body. The title keeps its old weight, the burden hung round the neck. The machine dreams a whole flock, a myriad of iterations to pull from and be inspired by, while my hand sews one, slowly, in an aging body that cannot make enough. There is delight in the abundance and joy in the slow making itself, and dread on both sides: of surrendering the satisfying meditation of the making to the desire for speed of production, of being surpassed by the thing I feed. The albatross is that contradiction — worn at the neck, and not put down.