Cheyenne Gallion

They came from all the boat docks, by the water that grew smaller each day
As it conceded to this particular East Texas July heat
We grew stronger until the fall
Walking barefoot painfully on hot asphalt and sticker-filled yards and sharp gravel

It was only at night they would come, when we turned on the light
We didn’t know then what it was we were doing
Gathering all those small creatures like the moon, they know about the moon
Light, not like our light
Closer than a million years of evolution told them it would be

The old tennis court, we turned on the lights
Old lights, taking a long time to be light
Soon an adult would come and tell us to get outta there, to turn them off

They would not think about the thousands of tiny fragile carcasses, at our feet
All the mayflies from by the lake
Living their entire life in one day, they had flown to us
Most nights
It was normal to not see them
Until their ritual of death

I would think about a superior being, seeing me for the first time as I died
Seeing my life only then
As one day, so short
Wondering how much of the universe was never understood, to me
I knew the mayflies were glad to have lived
I was glad too, to have lived so long already
If I was a mayfly it would have been 8am-ish of my life then, or sometime in the early
morning
Not very long after I was born
I knew these things

Some days are much longer than others, to the mayfly

editors note: In our larval stage we are more adept at decipherment. – mh clay

Our bear and child of bear
Waking us
A fourth time
I woke up and got out of the stained sheets, mattress
Soft and bitter, rind of memory
Exposed
From here to where there was water

Our wolf knew all the things we thought
Not to talk about that day
Eye here and here
With us waking, naked and wondering
Where we left
Everything we knew we knew last night
Or two nights ago or whenever
It was, we decided to cut through the night
Lights lingering in a timeless white lie

Believing over and over
Yesterday–Last year
That one night in January 2013
That spring when I could do anything I wanted and not die
Like those dreams we both had
To lie about to remember
Differently

Like those concrete cows under the tree, empty
Trinity River basin in the dry winter heat
Of Dallas’s concrete asshole still steaming
From last summer and last year and that one time
Electricity sprang from the cables above us and Saunter, black
Angel, in a dark dark moment
We collided with
Each other and all
The things and things and things
That came after the sparks
All ours to destroy
Ourselves with, together as we remembered
Each other for the first time again
And again and again
We ran like the children of bears and of old wolves

Texas Wilderness
Dead against all the towns between Waco and our sacred reservoir
Never thought to teach our children all the feelings
Covered like guilt in the unexpected snow of 2014
Visions of blood against the subtle warmth of winter
Small amounts of red against
A dark universe of white matter
White like God
And sin

I am man in the universe of my being
Forbidden from the source
Bound to the gravity
Of slaves
Of the punishable
Deserving of this terror and unable to
Dream about mother and womb and secrets

Here I am

One snake sleeps in the forest, by the lake
The other in my bed

One snake knows everything but cannot move
The other knows how to read newspapers

One snake wonders how the moon will shatter
Across our desert
Across our reservoir
An implied destiny followed like a june bug toward the porch light

The cactus wonders
How long it will have to hold the water

Is it really suffering
If pain is forgotten
Or remembered differently

Or loved

When it is loved
The snakes are neon

Land beyond the carnivorous acid burn of Austin
Slither across America
And Eurasia and Ireland and Holland

There will be a bear who will come and break the ice shelf

There is a june bug who will look for light

There is sand in the engine