Actual Animals
       

It's not that the antlers pain, exactly,
                            budding from her forehead,
                  but they do in the first few weeks
                                              feel raw,
                            and her gait
                                                        changes to accommodate
                  the weight of them,
                            so that she feels as if her head
                                              is still turning after
                            it stops,
                                              and there are doorways
                            to consider,
                                              and other people's eyes,
                  so that after a while
                                              she stops coming inside,
                            and watches the house
                  from the edge of the woods,
                                              thinking: those were my parents,
                            but now they are just people,
                  thinking once I slept there, and not
                                              in a swirl of grass.
                  She remembers the last
                                              boy she kissed longest
                  of all, but even that
                            goes with time
                                              as her flank browns and dapples
                            and she grows elegant, tentative,
                                              and dumb.

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Copyright © 2011 Rebecca Hazelton All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission