the parable of the wide eyes

There are parables about animals bound in maroon and gold in my garage. The animals are clever

and some speak to one another like men with wives they didn’t work hard enough to keep a life with.

My parable is bound in brown and gold and green,

I speak to everyone

I kiss the lips of yellow flowers and remember the head rush of eye contact in bronze lighting

There is a hare, a tortoise, two koi fish and an elephant here, and they have all given up on racing

We mosey in this fable

And there is plenty of winning. I don’t eat any mushrooms or meet any queens, but I’ve flown and fallen without them

My best suit is knitted smoke, and I wear it to a ball

I do not lose any slippers, and I take a cloud home

There is no....simple lesson to teach me. I understand kindness just fine,

but there's a big stone plain in my belly;

flammable at that,

no quiet caretaker to bring it a glass of water.

i am here to learn to eat with more than my eyes, more than my mind

or i'll simply implode. turn to obsidian. nick my lover's tongue at every kiss.

I am queer in this story. I was queer in the last one too

I’ve never met a pair of eyes I could not find a warmed coal inside of...

I am something of a warmed coal. A soft mound,

A shapely thing- to be heated, and fed.

once heated and fed, I am simply the mammal who made it to a building

I will work as needed,

and i will eat so that i may live, but i will

sit. Oh, i will sit often

Loved, and full of fruits and cheeses and other things that two people might feed to one another, though not here

I will have my fruits, and my cheese, and listen to impassioned retellings of Glee’s most painful and confusing moments,

And i had a lovely time.

(2021)