It’s so embarrassing
to have anything known
about you. Shoe size or where
you are ticklish. Oral allergies.
The long, lapsing brain fog
of your hormonal miseries:
cringe categorizations
of your sorry existence.
There’s an app to identify species,
as if a toad is not just a toad;
a roach, not just a roach.
As if a sad bitch is not just a sad bitch.
We trail the urban forest,
its graffiti bridge and kicked-stone paths,
with intertwined pinkies.
Put our lens to cinnamon-brown trunks,
weedy greenery, creepy crawlies.
Try to know them. Misspeak
their given names into the breeze.
The less you know
about me, the better.
Oh, the jaguar’s tongue
of this life. Cotton candy
sky above the pine trees and
red-stemmed poison ivy—all
seen from the same square foot.
So much to categorize.
I’m an opportunist seeking
for what I’ll never find.
What might not exist—
and now, unfortunately,
you know.