Things I Have

By Rabbitfeet

I kill every bug I see in the house now (just in case) because I can’t have another infestation, won’t have another and he tells me you weren’t the type to kill bugs before, and my fear has made me violent, a bad dog like the one I have in my chest, wet and shower-shiny but I tell him I don't care, can’t have this happen again, but I’m lying and afraid to have such a shoe-wielding temper, to have fear that drives me like the cart drives the white-eyed horse, to have a restlessness that refuses to die, legs curled like an insect and helpless, to have needs I don't know how to meet and to have a control problem - as in, a need to be in it, always; 

I have a ring from my grandmother, and I have messages from her ghost and I have the ashes of my cat on the mantle, and they claw at me like she did and I can’t help it, I wear fake pearls and a turn signal for a haircut and I tell people i fuck girls and it’s true though I haven’t for so long and I like the way pretty girl asks me about it, but I don’t have the courage to press my sprawling queerness against the fresh bloom of hers to see what we might have so I have my want, and it feels so good in its terrible familiarity and it furs my brain when I should be writing good poems for good reasons but I don’t have good poems, and I don't have good reasons, I have only desire, and fear, and shame, and the specter of a feline crone telling me it’s fine to beat bugs to death with a shoe, just like I did when you were a kid, remember: it kept you safe, then. 

Rabbitfeet (they/she) is a queer, non-binary writer who enjoys exploring gender, queerness, and nature and you can find them on Twitter: @rabbitfeetpoem.

Art by Jay Baker, an artist from Colorado living in Oregon, by way of New Mexico; he records music as Tom Foe.