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Self Portrait With Rabbits, (watercolour on ink)

Alright, now turn on your heel. Don’t look back. Just keep a steady pace. And don’t worry about the havoc you leave behind you. The light will fall to its knees, the sea will boil. You’ll take it one foot after the next and you won’t think about it. About all that has gone “bad” like forgotten fruit. A haze of flies in the air. Your tiny steps, your ribs full of rabbits. The way you hide. In the distance, The white blur. Then the landmine, going off and going off, and going off. The dead, mangled fish, the charred forest, and the birds falling out of the sky. Don’t worry about the death of things. Or the sun’s eventual collapse. Just don’t look back. Feet blurring at light speed. Your pink skin is chafed and the trees are averting their eyes. Find somewhere safe. Somewhere it rains for three weeks straight. Somewhere your voice doesn’t follow, like a sneering pack of wild dogs. On the hunt. Walk away from Arizona — & all of its broiling air & uneven sidewalks, its gold shadows in the afternoon. Your want is foolish. That’s a given. You can board the windows & escape the noise. You would block yourself out if you could. The light scoots away from you, too. Your lungs sit idle from disuse. A slab of meat on your plate and all you can think about is the animal that it once was. You want to be gentle with yourself. So you gently peel the skin back from the wound, and then you slip inside it. Tucked in safely. Out of reach. Unsteady, cavern-like. Whittled to a sharpened edge. Drive yourself to somewhere the sky stretches on for miles. Yellow, like a batch of sunflowers. Promising wilting things. And we can laugh about this, too. Someday. The way that I’m speaking directly to God when I say, “Here! You can take me back. You can have it all! The mouth that unloads itself like a gun, the chivalrous, immature heart. These fingers that carve themselves out of the picture! And here! You can have the brain, too! With its’ bloodshed, and self-blaming. With its skeletal frame and rheumy eyes. The body that rises out of the lake, and asks to be warm, again. With a roof over its head, and food on the table. You sad, flightless thing. You with your missing teeth and misplaced intentions and a lost continent for a body. You took off running, and shot yourself in the foot.