Roadkill

by E.W.I. Johnson

When I told you I loved you, I felt my mind open up
into a vast wound speckled with fumes and
sputum, an underground lake.

So I sever my limbs, start with my toes, one by one, daisy
petals plucked with my rusty clippers, then tossed
into a soft woven basket.

I move to my legs, those big barky trunks where mushrooms
fruit, and I really saw and hew and as I hack away
I say: let’s run away together—

But of course I never say that, I’m not that kind of lonely,
just the regular kind where I lie on asphalt, lick crumbs
of melted cheese off the hot tar road

by which I mean why does love make me feel like an animal
dying in the forest and by this point I’ve moved on
to my arms, and let me tell you,

chopping off your own arms takes skill, but I did it, and
I threw those fuckers in the basket with everything else.
While you fly free, pluck puffballs, the earth turns inside out

into a pillow of your skin encrusted with the radiance of
a thousand small suns. I don my helmeted headlamp, grab my axe
and burrow deep

inside your cavernous chest, so rich with treasure.
I lug my basket of limbs, tugging with my teeth
as I tunnel deeper and deeper.

I count each rib bone one by one
and when I’m fully inside you,
I bury each of my limbs in your meaty flesh

then curl up for a long, long slumber
beneath your slowing heart, our last nuzzle
in the ditch beside the whirring highway.

E.W.I. Johnson (he/him) is a poet living and working in Chicago. He has poems appearing in publications such as Sonora Review, Jet Fuel Review, and the climate change anthology Dear Human at the Edge of Time (Paloma Press, 2023). Follow his writing, skateboarding, and unusual plants on Instagram at @ewijohnson_poet