By Rabbitfeet
my final cbt session was last week:
i am chopping green onions,
sprinkling saturn’s rings over rice;
my place in the universe.
i saw pink lilies on my way to see her;
saw a gash of cormorants cut into the water and leaching across the sky,
ink-staining the backs of my eyelids.
my therapist told me to stop looking for omens.
she is smoke and grain;
i drink her in,
buzzing like a hive,
shedding self and terrified.
green things: my onions, the maple leaf drifting to rest at her feet, the umbrella whose thick
shade presses us close enough to make me sick.
don’t pull your nails from their universe-ordained place;
leave your skin and hair where it belongs;
let her look at you; look back.
don’t flinch from her voice,
sweeter than honey dripping from an open hand.
gold things: the sun-caught trees, the water, the fermented apples.
you promised,
she is smiling when she says it,
then sweating and glittering aurulent,
and i am unable to shed myself and so afraid.
information, fact-finding: her tattoo is a warning, her sister is an angel, her cat is black and
found.
the music is terrible,
but she steals my cigarettes and tells me there is an intimacy to it,
and she whines when i chastise her.
i want to slip from my soul and become the bacteria wriggling on her eyelashes.
my therapist told me only to fear the statistically likely.
i don’t say, what do you think the likelihood of you f***ing me to death would be? like, percent-
wise.
i say, i’m tired, too, though i don’t think i will ever sleep again.
it’s raining but i don’t feel it, only feel her, her heat beside me, the smell of her smoke.
green things: my heart, sick with jealousy.
i see only damp wood and the water glittering copper and aluminum;
i can’t look at her without frying my corneas on her aura;
she is an imploding star.
gold things: her neck, her eyelids, her fingers;
my place in the universe.
Rabbitfeet (they/she) is a queer, non-binary writer who enjoys exploring gender, queerness, and nature. Their tales are those of the very human through the lens of the non-human. Expect mangled word choice, a little terror, and transcendental joy. And animals. Lots of animals.
Hot Pot Magazine 