Animal Masks

My friends play with me like I am a frog that keeps fig bread, watercolors, canned sardines, and a good story under a log a big eyed metamorphosing little being with an amphibious habit of finding bears 

The only thing I kept from the home we made inside those green walls was the wooden jaguar he carved for me. I still can’t grizzle his name and never will. We mauled each other so I left him for the call of adventure to a concrete jungle.

We wrapped our feet together before tacos in the mornings and drove around locking grips under the sunsets. He’d later say I shed too much of my sex life like the python in Carrie’s shoes. Before I slid away, he showed me Nahuatl moongold. To the sweet honey keeper I was a feathered snake.

Along came a man named bear that broke me in like a horse. A wild mustang and a pretty pony, I appeared as a majestic beast yet was handled like a prey animal. I wanted his foals so my heart galloped to him even when it trampled me, even when his darkness lassoed me into a pin. 

You can hold your breath like you're diving under ice so I wrote you poems before I kissed you. I come with you like a whale because you treasure my deep-sea knowledge and named it respect. You transatlantically convey when you want to hear my moaning songs.

A bear spider got into my blood and in my sand dreams. He played with me like a green iridescent beetle in his web spinning fingers. That 8th lesson made me have to sit with hard feelings in a way that led to a rebirth through shit I’d been rolling up. 

I don't know what animal you see me as, does little sister count? I’ve always desired you disguised as a Satyr teaching me about maenads. Before the mid 6th century B.C, before you had a complicated relationship with your cub’s mother. 

Like a coyote I tricked that cowboy with a beard like a bear into loving me too long. Got scared away by his fire and ponytail so I made my howls sound like laughter and joy sound like the ghosts of children. We sure did two-step well together under the neon moon. 

Angel Gabriel knocked three times; said to pour my love into a swan. For 5 full moons I danced and prayed to Artemis like an arktoi whispering 

Send me a man just for me where my face is clear

Don't let him hurt me like a sacred deer

Give him the gift to see me

a dreamer, a woman, a mother, a lover, a healer, 

a mythology, a something wild