In Wilderness Box

By Anton Hildingsson

Ropes carve into ankle flesh. Long enough upside down the world turns upright, but blood never stops hammering against bone.

Flies billow above the compost pile in the jungle yard. In tall grass rests dinner’s carnage from when the badger screamed. I only ate a little and that put me here.

The carcass says, “This could be you.”

The Hands cut the ropes at dawn. As I sit and talk to the faces in the wood, the dust rats hiding under beds and the pathfinders’ tiny lights hovering along silicon seals, I trace the gashes in my ankles around and around.