COREY VAN LANDINGHAM

I. To Have & To Hold

I go to a forest where they give away animals that help you sleep. Bones tunnel into the ground where they reappear later like old roots.

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Easy.

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No one keeps me at arm’s distance and whispers too much fur into my mouth. No one staying in the ground can remember the sound of you brushing your teeth. No one making animal sounds underneath a nightmare.

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It turns me on, this morning with all the birds fallen out of the trees. I discard all my old déjà vus.

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If I am never on a horse without you, you never existed, right?

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I hate the light that forces the day like a fox breaking into an egg.

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I rearrange the only shadow left to me. The trees. The animals are encrypted with all my old recipes for winter soups, so light passes through them.

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You would have told me that’s impossible. That everything has to have its own shadow.

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It is incredibly important, what I do not say to the fox I am handed. Anything can hunt the hand that feeds it.

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But it is winter, I am cold all the way through. There is nothing inhuman enough to eat with a spoon.