You could bounce a quarter off the soles of

my feet, thanks to a lengthy study in not wearing

shoes, this keeps me moving across the outback.

I smell like: hard muscles, desolation,

am swift like a mammal. If you peeled

them back, you’d see something

else snaked through my plantar facea—

it’s what keeps me moving.

These days, it seems my only reprieves

from dryness are steady rolls of sweat carving

intricate sedimentary systems across my legs,

and the occasional pink salt lake. Aside from

prey, blood is a formality of my past life.

At times, forgetting the continent I am trying to forge,

I am convinced I’m on Mars. Anyway, even my eyes

choke out tears in poofs. By day, they are busy

discerning heat waves from ghosts, locating

venomous things in fissures of the ground, and

squinting against the slow-fizzing sun. By night,

they study constellations who beam down,

but remain aware that I am foreign to their hemisphere.

My two ears yearn for more marsupial days, when I’d

hear bedtime songs, intuit the rustle of fur around my shoulders.

This journey has made an animal out of me.

I cannot grieve, so I throw my body

across the harshest landscapes.

I cannot grieve, I howl.

What I love, I simply devour.

Annie Hulkower is a poet and copywriter living in NYC. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Brokelyn, Glittermob, and elsewhere.

Image: tenplay.com.au

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