You Are Not Grass
       

The last wild passenger pigeon was named
Buttons because the mother of the boy who shot it,
stuffed the bird and sewed black buttons for eyes.

People with Ekbom syndrome imagine
they're infested with mites.

It's possible the entire Buttons family
developed Ekbom, an aspect of which is
folie à deux (madness between two),
where a person in contact with the sufferer
develops symptoms—as in an actual infestation.

All wild things have kleptophobia:
the fear of being stolen, as well as cleithrophobia:
the fear of being trapped. I did, after
the divorce and my mother began datingfear
of being adopted by a man
wearing slacks and old fashioned shoes, (automaton
ophobia?) who winked at me and promised to return
my mother at a decent hour. Whose accent
was Southern, who pronounced his R's
so long they became words in their own right,
words at the ends of words; his R's
like grappling hooks, like a crocodilepurse
with yellow eyes.

Why is the fear of being trapped a clinical phobia,
while the compulsion to slit
and stuff a thing not listed in the DSM?

Nature permanence is the healthy acceptance
that you are not grass but human, beneficial
if you suffer from hylophobia (fear of trees)
not so helpful if you have Cotard delusion
and know you're not only human, but a corpse.
Related to Cotard is xenomelia: the feeling
that one's limbs don't belong to the body,
chirophobia: fear of hands. And worse,
apotemnophilia, where a person disowns
the limbs, yearns to live life

as an amputee. Why the insistence
that an animal have black buttons,
yellow marbles, key holes for eyes?
that its entrails be replaced with horsehair
and rags? that the peppery dots
swarming the blanket aren't mites? What are the chances
that a man who flashes his teeth when he talks
doesn't bite? To fear is animal.

To create out of fear must be human—
slits to let the mites out,
steel shot like beautiful beadwork
studding lavender breasts. Phantom limbs
when real hands become too dangerous.

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Copyright © 2018 Sarah Sousa All rights reserved
from See the Wolf
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Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission