studies in reaching

“studies in reaching”

be wary of the girls you find in trees.
they fought off their gods with nails and teeth.

be wary of the girls you find in trees.
they fought off their gods with nails and teeth.

i.
get small, he says. the shine on your forehead will disappear like darkness. small against the bark, this feels like breathing. i am the unsolvable- sum of fractal lengths, infinitude of beast geometry, quivering like an arrow. relax. get small against the bark, striations of muscle, your own- this feels like breathing. “the curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.” what if it’s not pretending anymore?

human wolf and wolf animal, there are two sets of helix in my blood. my maker got scared when he made me, and stopped. i am the first walk forward, the paw made of hands, fingers, toes. i cannot regret this anymore. “sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human” and my page catches flame but i forget to recoil.

i can be peter pan for awhile. but in my coarseness i am lost girl. i am wolf. peter pan hands set on hips, jaunty smile, adventure-hips crack and birth the only, the fractured equation i came from. god stared back at me and proclaimed- they leave her wild. everytime i lit candles they still couldn’t find my tracks..

don’t trust me with your mortal heart because i love recklessly. i will curl up in your bones nursing the last drops of what you are. don’t trust me with your mortal heart because i love endlessly. who can love the girl who is always disappearing against the bark? get small, i tell the flaming feral bloom inside my heart, the blaze- be still. low to the ground, where no one can follow me..

there is no finding. i am the woods.

ii.
my tail still twitches, self-willed reverse evolution- i incubate in the tangle of fur i came from, renewed. i don’t want to cry for all these things anymore. “linearity is brutal.” i throw my daggers at the map, the eight of swords. i wore my blindfold in the forest but all i saw was light. tell me how you can go back again—? you can’t.

god discarded this trait that evicts me from presence. in wet moonlight you can still see it shining on the sides of trees. the ability to dissolve. the ability to be dis-solved, my dissolution into the wilder-ness, “an animal flowers in the elements. grows wings.” to be this other thing, and not me.

crackling in the root, the sands of my freedom sift the time here. explode every hourglass, the only promise i can keep is the sound in the back of my throat- remember how it felt to be butted up against the terrifying sheen of everything.

as hard as she tries, a wild one can only be a retracted claw.

the reckless in her element blood-borne.

be wary of the girls you find in trees.
they fought off their gods with nails and teeth.

*quoted lines from
alice’s adventures in wonderland (carroll); nightwood (barnes); humanimal (kapil)