From the dusky claustrophobic bedroom,
I watch the storm roll in. 
It was dark when it started, 
now it is light outside. 
Or it should be light, 
but only the gray sneaks in. 

My corgi has been in bed with me since 6:30 am.
6:30 was two hours ago. 
Cowering under the covers. 
He barks at the storm, 
with each thunder crack. 
He does not understand. 
He is terrified by this unknown attack. 

I sympathize with him. 
I do not fear the storm, 
my base of the skull bickering finds solace 
in the white noise of the precipitation. 
But I know the muscle tension 
in his body as he lays here with me. 
I know the feeling fear makes 
when it is drawn tight against your bone. 

I sympathize with his theory of the unknown. 
I suspect that dog brains have enough 
neural horsepower to imagine. 
To create explanations for the unknown, 
even if they lack the language for it. 
And if a corgi brain works anything like mine, 
the image painted on the sistine chapel 
beyond their pupils is startling in it’s starkness. 

If silence can be a rabbit hole,
a tornado of maybes that don’t have answers, 
what must it be like when the unseeable,
omnipresent fear has a sound?
Rattles the windows?

I tell my corgi fairytale bedtime stories. 
About how Thor lives above us, 
in the clouds up there. 
I tell him that Thor and his dad are fighting,
like we fight, 
this corgi and I.
 
Maybe Thor ate an entire box of watercolor pencils again. 

Maybe Thor rolled all over the clean laundry with his awful corgi body. 

I make Thor reflect my corgi, 
since Gods are more relatable when they are in our image. 

Maybe, Maybe Thor ate the liners out of an important pair of shoes 
and then puked up the mess all over the kitchen floor again. 

Thor and his dad are fighting. 
Thor is throwing his hammer around. 
But they aren’t mad at us, 
punnie humans and corgis. 
I tell him in a soothing tone that this will pass. 
I tell him that this room is our cave, 
that we are safe here. 
That the dark will hide us, 
I tell him that time will heal the emotional wounds 
of the creatures above us. 
That we just have to ride out this storm. 

Eventually, as the windows stop shaking, 
the corgi, his body relaxes. 
See? I say. 
See? It stopped. Thor and his dad made up. 

The corgi is asleep now. 
His body soft against mine. 
The storm has passed. 
But I stay with him in the dark.
In the gray 
After all, it is nearly nine in the morning,
and I am still in bed. 
In the cave. 
I am still talking to the corgi. 
I am still refusing to go outside. 

I have gotten good at these fairy tale yarns
of how the storm will pass for him. 
But in the eye of the storm it is still so hard 
for me to see how the sun will rise again. 
And everything I tell myself, 
words I pray will taste like fairy tales? 
They only taste like pennies and lies. 


Thor

We are approach and avoidance. 
A twitchy survival cadence.
Squishy machine gun arteries, 
cortisol running through bloodstreams. 
We are survival’s pen, 
even when tomorrow is too thick,
an ink to pass to another’s naked skin.
Designed by our sky gods,
we are battle ready beating hearts,
opposable thumbs and moving parts.
But our little creature brains,
have nemeses now that have no name,
culture’s drive by obscenities,
foes beyond label on our single syllable lips. 
 
Starving populations cling to the surface,
of our Pangea sister cities.
Our patriarchal father figures lead us goose step,
stepping into the trenches before we know,
the name a mother once  sang onto our enemy’s face.
Sobbing sexualized power struggle leaves,
the bodies of victims piled,
labeled as others as we beg a makeshift levy,
leverage we pray is enough to keep the 
waves of this culture out.
We were not designed for this battle,
battle but not this battle,
we evolved for chimpanzee bone breaking,
insomnia to keep the wolves at bay.
But our night time terrors have grown kudzu strong,
weaving through our neural networks as we sleep,
between our teeth as we eat.
We feel only impossible.
 
So we fight those nearest to us,
giving fear the face of familiarity.
We lash out with pain response predictability.
We are not the guard dogs careful growling,
we are the Pekinese sinking,
sharp teeth into comrades' skin,
when the man at the fence riles them.
We are guns into a school,
bullets into children.
We are bloody battered bedroom doors,
cellular smears on those who hold us. 
We are stomped flesh at Black Friday sales
homicides over Warcraft Worlds.
We are middle fingers on the rush hour freeway. 
Poets lashing out with their painful chicken scratch, 
scratching out the eyes of an advocate.
We are Dodgers killing Giants in a parking lot. 

We are fighting.

We are fighting,
battle ready mammalian organisms. 
Sympathetic nervous system, GO. 
But we can’t look into the dilated pupils of our oppressors. 
Can’t open our skulls wide enough to fit the whole world in, 
to our schema of dangerous danger. 
So we label each other unsafe, 
and attack with rage. 
Grind each other into the diatomaceous earth,
bury our neighbors in the name of Juliet.

And the systematic assailant,
this fear that feeds,
one eye open rests,
as it sleeps above us,
This barely conscious network beast,
it's harvested blood keeps, 
universal thump thump beating, 
bleating out a morse code message. 

Waiting to see if we wake up, 
and realize in time, 
where all our anger, 
should be aimed. 


Ambercf