reck·​less

Right now I want to be promiscuous - reckless? I want to trust, but also to revel, in its shallowness. I want to make bad decisions, because is there such a thing? To call, to rooftop. To sink my teeth into my own night, to hide by twilight and booze the feelings I carry by day and to feel no shame, but rather peace - the abominative, ployful reverence of a life pierced and strung by the needle of generations. Back arched in pain, I wince and ask for it again. I am my ancestors, whether or not they are mine. I am darkness and sunsets by day and by night.

To see an animal and deem its actions innocent is to remember that their consequences are personal. If my impacts are limited to those in my conversation, well-communicated and consensual, only the zookeeper can rightfully intervene. And the keeper I see is a forest, not a warden, their hands a caressing, lavender meringue, wisping around us as we wind ourselves together. No gauntlets claim access to the tracing of my fingers on a lover’s chest, the curiosity of my tongue as it slowly paints its way up, and within, their leg. Forests such as these are home to animals such as me, and in this very year I am alive still.