My paws on the typewriter

once more completely useless-

another night I fled.



It’s never clear, but it’s
nuclear,

it’s dust and it’s noise and it

radiates,

it 
mutates..



But I can’t let you see me

balled up,

ten different shades of not-yet-showered..

The day is long,

I gave it up

as soon as it started, sighed

into the sunlight,

rolled over.



If I took out all my teeth

would you look at me?

I turned tail on you

to search for

a pack or somewhere 
to sleep, but my shoulders ache

from running, now.

My little tap-tap-tap
is all I have,

now.



In better months

air smelled like green

and flowers,

like leaves,

like trees.

Yet now, it’s all rot

and refuse-

rubble

and

ruin.



You’d have left

soon enough,
I could smell it coming
like winter, or
bad weather.

I stick my snout in

too much of you, I spread you
thin and without warning
then try to roll in it, try to
saturate.

Made you scared enough
to scorch the earth
to be rid of it.
Yet it rid us all
of wonder, of
wandering.

It’s just

my skin, stretched

in dim light.

Small shapes, smaller

breaths, the tiniest

of exhales.



But I don’t know

how you can sleep,

how you can close

heavy-lidded eyes

without the memories

licking them alight again-

I know, sometimes

I remember like wildfire, and

sometimes,
like embers, 
but
I never

forget.

Keep running, kid,

keep burning

and listen

to that message in your blood

that tells you to live.

Thought I forgot it once, but

that was then.



See, I’ve buried my dead,

sinned and paid for it.

Yeah, I’ve wept.

Still bear the scars that prove it

under the tattoos I’ve marked myself with.



But you gotta bet

the howling I’ve done hasn’t made me hoarse,

just paddled my canoe west,

gave myself some distance,

learned to breathe again.



So when I go, and they ask,

“Did she have passion?”

All the people I’ve known will scream,

“Yes!”

And that chorus will wish

to etch their skin with my scent

until we meet again.