The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Animal Unfit by Megan Nichols

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Summer Vacation

We’re not being hunted but we are animals unfit
                for city water is calcifying our arteries or maybe our bones
can’t keep themselves from leaching what we crave most, like love,
                microscopic yet so abundant we’re sick of it leaving
stains in the sinks and shower doors open to our agony
                why can’t anything stay clear? We’re not being hunted
but we’ll sleep in cedar for half a moon. You see, what fortifies you
                poisons me.  In spring water beside hemlock, no, maybe elder bush,
I hide us from our loved ones. They don’t believe me
                when I say I don’t deserve you I mean I’m unable to carry
more sediment in my veins. Every sip weighs a body down. For a while,
                let’s resist the salt lick, just in case you love the wrong ones
and their offering is the trap I cannot stop suspecting it is.
                Don’t remember this as ritual into my history. For you,
this is simply our holiday in the vines. For you, we’ll return to tap water,
                we’ll lap it up, we’ll accept the apples over the fence.
I am not being hunted; I am not heavy with what I cannot prove;
                I am not fearful of everything that floats in the water glass;
I am not contradicting myself; I am reciting a spell.

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