Poetry Archive
the first night as roadkill, you look for your pieces. try to figure out what’s you and what’s pinecones. some parts wander farther than others. some you won’t be able to find again. but you don’t need them, anyway. you’re roadkill, now. and there’s no way to remove the road from you. can’t iron those tire tracks out of your fur. can’t remove your tail from the gears. soon, the scavengers will come. tomorrow, the sun will rise on a world with one less creature. or many less, because there’s never just one. when you’re roadkill, you never die alone. yes, tomorrow the vultures will pick clean your bones and savour the taste of warm blood as the rest of you turns cold. for now, your eyes are wet and the headlights are dimming in the distance. and you will never be alone again.
七. The First Night As Roadkill
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Untilted: Preview of Death of the Abstract Artist
A girl writes her number on a napkin and slides it to me. There's coffee on the corner, but she smells like peaches. She sees the grounds under my nails that have been stuck there since I started this job three years ago. I don't know how to tell her that I'm paranoid. That I spend too much time inside my head and never notice when people get haircuts. That I am so gentle I forget what it means to be rough. How I cry when I dry flowers because I know it hurts to be crushed. Can you still say "It's not you, it's me?" 'Cause it's true. And she told me she likes climbing trees. What kind of poem could I write, to explain to her that the last time I loved a girl who liked to climb trees, she stomped out the embers of my love. How do I tell her that my love was actually a house fire? That it consumed every familiar artifact? That it singed the chair legs, it ushered the cat out the window. How do I tell her that I'm scared of fire? I've always been. I ask everyone to light matches for me. Otherwise, I'd watch it burn down to the tip. It would be cruel to lie to her, because my love is that match. And the first has to touch each unsullied inch, until there's evidence of my love in every part of me. Until you can't look at my palms without knowing I'm smitten. How do I tell her that falling in love felt like falling asleep? How falling asleep felt like the hum of a car engine. How that engine feels like I'll never be home again. There was a moment when love was the best thing that ever happened to me. Before it became the worst thing that ever happened to me. And now, I don't want to ever braid someone's hair again, or let them hang the stars in my sky, or keep bouquets they picked me. This is deflection, of course. From the fact that I trusted one human once, when I was young and very stupid, and she, like teenagers often do, lied about what slinked beneath her skin; or perhaps did not know that she was a monster until she touched her own claws and came away with fresh blood and old scars. And I have let that decimate anything I propped my tired bones up on. I know how foolish it is, to let one broken girl turn me away from love forever, to let joy slip through my fingers like fine silt. Because one is not a good sample size in any experiment, but I took the findings as fact, mistook correlation for causation, and based my thesis on it. Now I'm standing before a board of professors reviewing my work, and scratching notes in the margins of my insecurities. They all claim to be experts in their fields. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and will call this conclusion my magnum opus, my Mona Lisa. Still. I'll always wonder if fireflies look brighter up close. If dogs get tired of having their name called. If the sofa knows the love of the two people who sit on it. It's safer here, I'll tell myself. None of this fits on the napkin, though. So I just tell her that I don't date.
I. Carcass
How does one part with a limb? In some darkness, I'd imagine. Stringy flesh. The scent of rot. An Instrument so dull you'd Rather splinter The bone yourself. Fragments like starshine, like gemstones. Can you tear it clean off? Even gangrenous, Even pleading? Blood like An oil spill, watch as it bubbles there on the surface. If you struck it, Would it burn? Would it slip below and disappear quietly? Would You miss it? Would you Feel empty without it? Could You be hollow and still trill like you always do? Could You breathe And feel the wind against Your ribs? Could you carve it out and probe it, Sticky and warm and beating, like sweet grass in the breeze. I don't know why you came here, or where you'll Even end up. But you took these Bones of mine with you. My blood, my limbs. I'd shed my Skin just to wrap you in it. I'd shape Myself into something you could need. Bullet, needle, pen, I can be it. Just say the word.