Milk Teeth

Between midnight and dawn.

July. The concrete keeps the heat. All night the concrete keeps it.

Blue lace on my shoulder catches the dashboard light. I put it on in the bathroom with the door locked. In the mirror I looked underwater; it turned me into someone else.

If you crush a blue jay feather it turns brown. The blue was in the looking. What’s left is what was always there – brown and dutiful, the truth of the thing.

Four fox cubs at the edge of the concrete. All night I watched them play at murder. The smallest carried a crisp packet in her milk teeth; her siblings studied as she whipped down the silver and learned its weight.

The world now is four foxes, blue against ribs, the rabbit kick of my own heart.

The engine has been off for hours.

The lace is wet with salt. Still blue.

The smallest cub stops at the margin. She looks back – at the car park, at our shared dark – when I was no one and she was becoming. I thought: go. I thought: look how simple it is, to just go forward into what you are.

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