The fox offers a beautiful argument about ending
up whole on the side of the road. Some animals
are capable. Some animals are bone dusting
the highway’s sharp lines. I am an animal
who’s not sure how to live without taking
up too much space. In every fairy tale, there’s
a dead mother, there’s a daughter who’s a girl
whose only god is the ignorance of danger,
there’s a forest and a grandmother whose god
is I told you so. I am an animal who isn’t sure
about the happily, whose god is in the ever.
Ivy scrolls over the highways, the headlights’
eyes open to a terror synonymous with wonder,
with learning they’ve always been the same thing.
In the margins of the story where we tell ourselves
there’s a border between home and wilderness, the fox
isn’t grinning. He’s hiding his laughter inside
of his teeth. The girl becomes the mother becomes
the grandmother who becomes dead and the story
narrows to a light in the center of a pupil, steady,
still even after the car’s signed its name, hot, in rubber.
Are you paying attention, I read in its tracks.