We both pretend the backyard rabbits still emerge to nibble at our grasses, though neither has seen them in weeks. I don’t know if you still look or just nod along when I proudly call them our rabbits. 

 

I know you used to fear rabbits until you allowed a large one to lie upon your back.

 

Each day approaches as another anniversary, of what I seldom know.

 

You say you’ve decided to pray again and I ask if that is accessible to you. You smile at the question. You tell my best girl you are praying for her and none of the three of us know if that is true. 

 

I hide treats in the refrigerator and you pretend not to find them, allow me to have something for myself.

 

You vacate when I ask.

 

I hear your story about awaking to the sound of a person being mauled by a bear so many times I start to believe I heard it too and tell the story as my own.

 

Sometimes it is simpler to tell a story as your own. In this way, we become each other.

 

In the morning hours I dreamed you asked if I wanted to stay another few years and I said yes and you prepared yourself to be happy doing that. 

 

Awake I don’t know what we’ll do or where we’ll go. The tarot deck keeps reminding me to unclench my gut and embrace the coming whirlwind. 

 

Someone hurt me once. And then others hurt me. Now I find it hard to embrace anything.

 

I resolve to make fried chicken and seduce you. Something soft in me uncovers and I consider you.

 

I touched fowl for you.

 

Understand my body became off limits to me. I cannot access it freely. My body might as well be yours, though I cannot give it up to you or anyone. So much to make of a body I sense so little of.

 

I cannot become melting ice or cracking stone. You cannot hold ice or stone.

 

No one should be so reducible. No one so reduced.