Month: April 2024

Neonatal Pig

Wood rats are the hamsteriest of all the rats. We have one who uses our rock wall like a little cubby-filled highway. We watched each other for a long time yesterday as she darted in and out of openings making her way up to our neighbor’s house. I’m going to leave some trinkets out for her, things she might like for her midden.

Traffic was at a standstill on the highway through Toquerville this morning. Two sheriffs and an animal shelter officer were trying to capture a pig who was on the loose.

I moved a cobblestone in the yard and found a western fence lizard attempting to stay warm on this chilly morning. I carefully replaced the stone and apologized for the intrusion.

If you can love a chicken, you should be able to love a human being, but things aren’t always that simple.

I describe my complexion as neonatal pig.

Upheavel and Loss and Despair

I heard stories of fear growing up, stories of anger, stories of upheaval and loss and despair. The aunt who was poisoned by her husband who was also the man who molested my mother when she was a child.

The great aunt who drowned in pills, who scraped her throat raw trying to force the pills back up after regretting what she did in the moment, in the moment. Before that, the way she waded into a lake and tried to drown herself but someone saw her and fished her out to face the blessing and curse of another day.

Stories of fish on the line, writhing, all muscle and intent. Streams of urine flowing like fountains into the red-tongued water. Who stole watermelons again? Who was chased by a landowner with a shotgun? Father, father. It was father. The urine was him, too. The fish was everyone he touched, everyone who wanted to break free from his hold.

Father and his women and his girls and his parties and his CB radio and his handle and the handle he gave me when he made me talk to truckers on one of the biggest sex-trafficking highways in the country.

Oh, wait. That’s my story, not one I heard. I only understood it completely two years ago. It seared my mouth when I tried to tell it, so I wandered toward the sun and begged it to turn me into ash, into smoke, into anything other than this dredged body. Wait, that’s my story, too.