Overgrowth

What betrayed me, grew wild and uninvitedwith my blood. I ran down Hacksneck road beforethe red Tercel could make its final stall and start into the gravel.The summer my mother told me to weara bra, I wept every timeI saw my body in a mirror, didn’t want to growinto an endlessly curved thing.That same humid summer, which continues still,I held my grandfather’s rifle.this does not mean what you think.I needed to know that I could direct the course of a thing,my hands were so small, even if I tore openthe ruddy insides of somethingI did not care to know. The point isI envied the rabbit; its certainty.To see a dead thing is to also see yourself as that dead thing,opened and running out.When I fired the gun, it was notthe rabbit’s but my chest that I saw;thought, “this is it.”

The cattails know endless rows of wisp and wave, and the pines,and the queen anne’s lace all march a steady unfolding, this habit ofblooming and unfurling into themselves; they do not ask when it willend, do not beg to be less.

Onto the lowest branchof the smallest pine,I fling my spry, brown body. Certainly thistree held an open and sprawling bodyat its edge, knows wellthe human heft.The forest draws all wild thingshome; my bare breastsagainst the waning light.

When you ask me why I’m angry,all I see is the rabbit’s blood,which could’ve been myown.