(no subject)
tonight i made a little stuffed owl.
---
i remember the days when he began to look too thin, as a fraying rope caught in a game of tug and war, stretching and aching and pleading, his body wrung by fists with obvious agendas. a beautiful pawn, with lips too wet and eyes too dark, he was bound to be an animal cornered, knocking over glass jars and tin cans and brooms, and then cowering nervously frozen until bolting for a door cracked slightly open. he found himself in tight spaces, bathtubs running red, and did not recognize his laughter as his own but heard it as a shotgun or a car backfiring somewhere in the distance. he played russian roulette in his finest coat, smelling of attics and ticking time, and smiled shyly at others with his innocuous wolf fangs. he was not a portrait but a landscape and not a man but a wounded child. his voice was a merciful knife in my side when pain was the only answer.