the hunt
The afternoon is only barely melting into evening when we find the corpse on the side of the road. A deer, yes? Yes, deer -- cracked open like a pomegranate from belly to arched neck, ribcage yawning wide. I stretch the vowels of your name until I feel my own jaw pop. How lovely the body is when it pushes itself too far, how beautiful to feel the consequence. I have often yearned for consequence, and a boundary within which to feel it, be it your open questing arms or the uneasy threat of a car head- light’s yellow pool. The blood on the body is not vibrant unless it is illuminated. The deer is murky-dark except for where the light catches black syrup and shames it red, and I know I am not this kind of animal because I feel safe in the glow, where I am seen by you. Is there another animal you’d rather be? (Dear, yes? Yes, dear --) I would give you either half of this wishbone, help you suck the marrow from the shank. Crack into this evening with me, take a leg before the maggots come; fresh kill leads very quickly to rot and not all rot gives you wine. Sometimes all you get is the dead and then you have to decide which part to eat, tossing dirt over whatever is left behind. I have found that the predators are the ones who know how to hold themselves still. Will you prove me wrong? You tuck hair behind your ear and I see just where to put my teeth, if I can bear to bare them, tonguing over an incisor until it stings. Trust tastes like copper, like rust, and I imagine my car’s body hovering over the deer’s like a wolf with its engine humming. It’s that sound that gives me pause. Rumble of engine, rumble of purr. There is nothing that I would not be for you. I would follow you, nice and quiet, until the flash of violence and slick hot spill. Wouldn’t you like that, to be quiet? Would you prefer I be nice?
