There were ghosts in that forest,
that much I knew.
Spring reveals so much of the dead.
All of those bones: small bodies, intact.
Dead beaver, or muskrat, skulls with their teeth,
red toads leapt out from under our feet.
We were alone, you tried to convince me
that the sounds that I heard didn't come from a gun,
just wood being chopped, a mile away;
axe to tree
axe to tree
axe to tree
breath.
A deer can sense a human's presence
a mile away.
breathing, is a threat.
We sat beside the abandoned hunter's cabin
and watched those magnificent creatures run by.
They were so close, its as if in that moment
they had forgotten
what it was like to fear.
I swallowed the gin
and passed it to you.
I tried to relax.
It was my birthday, after all.
I was another year older,
surrounded by bones
clinging to you, the trees, and my lungs.
