you had a rabbit’s heart and wore sheep clothing whose wool could barely hide your wolf teeth when you laughed your jackal laugh and spat venom.
you hid beneath the hundred skins your mother draped you in, slipping to whatever coat, whatever trait suited you best for the weather. i shouldn’t have cared which one was yours—or if you even remembered. i should have hung you from the fence post and stuffed you with straw to scare away any other homeless strays, but i didn’t. i didn’t and now all that is left of your masks is the damaged skin you were born with and your fox red hair, and you’re not so homeless after all.
you’ll always be a roadrunner in your hollow bones but this nest is here to stay, this nest built from scraps of birdsong and truth. the wild animal in you doesn’t fear the mutt in me, and somehow that makes the both of us a little more human.
RUNAWAY || J.P.
