after Dean Young, for Drew
So many things in this life are unlike themselves

in cartoons, but it took me finding

a scorpion in Theodore’s bathtub

to admit it. I didn’t ask if

there was blood, a limb still

sweet from a dog’s love when they found

you. I was 11,315 days old

when I wrote this, and now I’m not

certain twigs make the best kindle for a campfire

when we’re already so many extra

cells. If I consider

myself a house of hair dressing

a home of bone, skin seems less

nonsensical. Doctors told me

Theodore was born with a stomach

no more than a marble, eyelid

thin, facts for which I was ill-

prepared so all night, I read to him

about rare metals, even rarer

exoskeletons. The Velvet

Ant, the Bird Mite. The Bark

Scorpion hardly moved when I crushed it

with the tip of a broomstick, its pop like a twig

bowing to a flame. Two days later, I mistook

a tick for an ingrown hair, and let it be. I found a friend

in a mirror once and understood differently

what it is to be eye-level with anything.