"Leo’s Bite"

Enduring illness made me forget you,

as one might forget magenta.

Then I recalled your shoulder

undulating under sun

that seldom warms

my joints and indoor skin.

Storm huntress of blue

wildebeest and zebra, serene as baobab,

you held a dappled lion cub in your jaw.

I—childless—envied your wild motherhood:

the cub’s mouth searching

for your dark teat, and warmth.

Patience and planets whirl

inside your gilt fur cage;

inside your gallop, a grassland sea.

I—struggling with a flight of stairs—

coveted your dance, the pride of sisters,

whiskered understanding.

Wildcat, I begrudged you,

until I remembered that you—

remote, but with a pulse like mine—

could help me bear my ruined body,

as you endure wind,

hunt, birth, and open sky.

Let me wrench a piece of joy

from this life of teacups and disease,

the way you wrench

wherewithal from the entrails,

nutrient-rich, of your spent

and bowing prey.

"Roar"

I am urged to carve an identity

from illness, despondency, wheelchair;

this identity will seemingly bring me

friendship on social media, until I delete it.

I am supposed to knit hats for homeless people,

live on the state’s monthly thousand dollars,

and watch my mother—aged, anxious wren,

spine bent—trying to care for me.

As I wait for attention to a neglected disease,

I am exhorted to tune my ire, a violin;

rallied to mistrust the lure to rend my body,

and face instead, with poise, a quarter-life in bed.

Yet I am not what I am supposed to be,

tired of counting breaths—I still have a roar.

If I could burn the decades I have lost,

I’d shout into the ocean’s salted surf.

I long to paint on wall-sized canvas,

travel, sunburnt, by myself,

kiss a man at dusk in Athens or Madrid,

and fill notebooks with the flush of life.

I yearn to eat a lion’s heart,

taste its blood and courage,

and adopt that blood and valor,

like a brother, for my own.