To a Capybara

I wanted your blunt beauty,

broad snout like a damp cliff,

​

the buck-toothed mouth

of your cavy body, round,

​

deep enough to lose a boy

inside. I could have kept you,

​

watched you stretch in my arms

from slick pup to bristled boar,

​

measured the spread of your webs,

the slope of your saddle. 

​

A child, I wanted to ride

away on a gentle, sturdy mount

​

through a cage door left wide open.

You were real. I was imaginary,

​

stalking the hallways of the mall

with Mom on our weekly hunt

​

for some trace of your scat

in the Borders, your DNA

​

in the papers nests of Pet City

guinea pigs, your miniatures.

​

She let me fill her house

with the sweet stink of their short lives.

​

Starving for we didn't learn what

until too late, their flesh unfurred

​

to ghost-gray. Reaching heaven

would take them years, decades,

​

she said at the shoebox burials, so long

I'd stop believing before they arrived.

​

Friend, meet them on that shore.

Tell them I'm bigger. Tell them not to wait.

​

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[Thanks to Carve for originally printing this piece.]