Cat daddy

by Lauren Hilger

I once ran home barefoot and found a thorn,
the kind that sticks in and locks, the kind that fed
early elements of evolutionary thought.
No shoes one thorn.

I am soft and silver throated here.
I make a burr of myself and stick on the old devils.
Reading under a fir tree, kicking my leg,
you know I love a doorway in nature.

I wash away the mountains, water myself with a can,
and want something but can’t remember what.
To stick a little in my pocket, maybe,
whatever’s here.

I’m to find a way to be his-alone. 

Lauren Hilger is the author of Morality Play (Poetry NW Editions 2022). Named a Nadya Aisenberg Fellow in poetry from MacDowell, she serves as a poetry editor for No Tokens.