it is okay sometimes, to just look at a thing and love it without leaving your mark on it.
i told you i was saddened - too many people feed wild animals, mistakenly believing “once won’t hurt”. too many people think that wild animals are just bigger/smaller versions of domestic animals - they see a fox running around a house on youtube and think that’s a catdog and i could keep it. i told you that the worst part of working with wildlife was having to take care of the aftershock of this. in my state, any nondomestic animal that bites a human must be put down to check for rabies, even if we are positive the animal is safe. the government just slashed the budget again, no more EPA. around this time every year, we spend hours on the phone trying to rehome creatures that can’t survive in the wild anymore - someone thought a feral animal could be “taught” to be a pet.
a woman cries to me. the fox in the basket is growling. “i thought it was like a dog,” she says. “I didn’t know it would be this much trouble.”
i told you - why can’t people understand that care can look different on different bodies. that sometimes love for one thing is not love for another. that it can be selfish to want to hold something that was not meant to be held. the lovely thing is that we have plenty to hold, and each other, and a whole world; but there are things with hearts that should stay in the woods. it’s not yours to touch, is all.
you told me: let people have their fun. it’s one raccoon. it’s one bird full of bread. it’s not that big of a deal.
much later, long after you had been washed out of my hair and my life and my hurting - i realized you would leave little bruises on me, but hated whenever my lipstick smudged across your cheek. you used to say - i just don’t like the feeling. you would bite my lip until it bled and look down at me and say - marking my territory.
my sister watches me fold my laundry. she says it’s nice to see me slowly coming back to happy. i thought i had been tamed by you; she saw i had actually just been broken in half. she smiles when she hears me laugh. you are regrowing your wild heart. and honestly… thank god for that.
