The deer walks the forest at night
and all the leaves bend to touch it.
It walks faster
and its hooves against dead leaves
rustle the sound of water.
Between its antlers a hole
deepens: an eye that remembers
nothing it has seen.
I shoot it, then cut away the meat,
which I must haul on my back
till it rots,
but never eat. This is the task I must do
again and again as penance
for a world destroyed.
But tonight, I linger: I saw
a femur in half to glimpse the glow
of the honeycomb
dripping through it, a relic
still warm
in the surrounding darkness,
and the eye between my ribs
tears open—a memory beginning
again to beat. Love has been gone
for some time now.
I have sawed through my own leg
trying to find the way back.