cynophobia ointment

the dog growling at you is just

body language you haven’t perfected

yet- there are worse things to be

than unlucky; what good narrative has done?

memories on tape will always be

wrong: that’s how it looked but not how it happened,

and you could manipulate me out of my trust,

but i really would mind, this is my instinct

no faith could shake from me, and this contempt:

mine and mine alone, so when you leave

the leash on, disdain festers somewhere, but words

have shaped me for eras; a manifesto:

swelling, but magic - consider: my brain

swells with buttermilk + cartography, places i have made

and destroyed and built again - blistered flower petals,

boiled saliva and sugar - don’t consider a reality too harshly,

you are bound to hurt yourself, honesty as bottled

truths: cell phone towers have sent

people to jail, bones don’t burn, pus will ooze

from the bite marks, all of the women

you’ve been have been forgotten - baby, the birds

do it, the bees do it, let’s go extinct - the conjuring

of a separation from the visceral

sometimes, i think you’ve always known

wedging yourself into every crevice

of empathy aches, and there could be solace

in terror; there could be black spots

on lungs or a cracked rib slowly

crushing the cancer, all of your fears come

true, and what has changed: maybe this

is how your emotional body sleeps