who the Fuck are you

Mahmood Khan (Pakistani artist)

Untitled, 2009

Leonard Howard Reedy (American, 1899-1956) Snowbound Cattle. Watercolor on paper.

You will come to regret your inaction the most

What would you do if you showed up for a date with me, and instead of a guy like I said in my dating profile, I was a small injured deer?

And you asked me why I didn't say I was a small injured deer in my profile, and I said I was worried you would hate me for being so small and injured?

And then I got a salad and slowly nibbled on it, flapping my ears while you told me about warhammer 40 thousand. And then when it came time to split the bill, I told you I had no money because I'm a creature of a forest, but that I would pay you for my portion in song?

And so I sat up on my hind legs, and sang the most beautiful sonata you've ever heard in your life. I sang of the valleys and the rivers. In the first part of the song, you could hear my voice waver from the pain of my injury. But then it crescendoed with fire and determination, as if in the middle of that very song I decided that I must keep living no matter what happens, and that you must keep living too?

Then, when you came back to your senses from being entranced by the beauty of the song, there were tears streaming down your face? I was nowhere to be seen, leaving behind only a single autumn leaf on the table? You looked down at your hands, and in your hands was a small note with your childhood dream you had long forgotten on it, written by your own hand?

What would you do?

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her,

her four black fists

flicking the gravel,

her tongue

like a red fire

touching the grass,

the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her —

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.