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I stole you
from the middle of a road,
mistaking your body
for my own.
I saw a way to examine myself
by gutting your perfect corpse,
dead upon impact with
something too large
for your small form
to avoid.
I stretched your skin apart,
poured out jellied organs,
intestines coiling into
deep pools of your blood,
while your face stared into some sort of
space I couldn’t see.
I thought you would wake.
I thought you would rise and bite me for
my inquiries.
Steal back the heart I held
in my hands.
I felt unjust but it was not I
who killed you.
I just wanted to learn.
Your body.
I just wanted some way to map
my own. Survival.
Anything to know myself
better.
Anything to allow blood
upon my hands,
for the sake of all the creatures
I have eaten for dinner.
I have eaten without knowing the feeling
of their wet hearts,
stilled,
by a knife or a blow.
A heart like my own.
In its physicality,
feels no different.
Maybe you are me.
Maybe we are the same.
Maybe, dear fox,
maybe I did kill you.
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Kristen L. Ringman is a cross-genre writer, painter, and photographer. She teaches
poetry workshops that integrate other forms of art, nature, and yoga. Her writing,
photography, and artwork have been published in the anthology eyes of desire 2: a deaf glbt
reader, Pitkin Review, and the forthcoming Deaf American Poetry Anthology.
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