August

In one corner above a field: a kid’s drawing of the sun. But with fat, round rays, like yellow petals, and a smiling lion’s face—cleft lip attached to a pink, upside-down triangle nose; black ovals for eyes. Something in me has awoken. A spark. A love. A sensation, by definition, must be felt. And then die off. No one still talks about the dentist who killed the lion named Cecil. I shut that in a box, along with learning that cats wounded in the wild don’t heal—that they die without the strength to hunt. I don’t understand much. Not suffering. Not the nature of risk. My fears—captive, domestic—yawn and flex their feet. Another version of me was sixteen and drove a yellow truck named Frisky. She drank with her friends beneath the shade of a tree. She could let her thoughts out. But she never put them down.