“Small Animal”
A red-eyed east now. I rend dreams of
myself, chewing through their paper
walls, my face is ceded in beautiful
slivers. This silver-bellied plane, a wound
I don’t rouse. I wake with the ache still
in me, cabin lights flaring, cold dawn
slinking down my throat. The day presses
close: I move through and my chest
is a room I keep trying to unlock, the door
swollen and my hands already
raw. Somewhere inside, a small animal
waits, breathing in the dark. It cages in
the shudder of the fuselage, us hauling
each other through the dark sky. And would
my marrow shoulder me, my heavy-
handed prayer homeward? Every step
I take I think of it, how even in stillness
it turns its head, how it presses its weight
into my ribs to steady this shake. Keeps
hulling the air, bitten black on
this side of my mouth.
