by Joshua Lillie
I’m running to catch the rabbit before it gets old,
with sun up enough to prepare it before the fire advertises
my position. The pure of heart also solidify in amber,
also require forty gallons of sap to hard-boil a single milky,
silver-clasped stone. You can squirt the water from the water gun,
but you can’t strain the microplastics from the water.
We couldn’t scan our footprints clean until the landscape
was catalogued with a barcode in the database.
I’ll be the bead of plastic that lives in your lungs forever.
My name on the spine is its own reward, inked there
like low sea levels revealing the limestone stains.
It’s helped me to understand how mechanical pencils work
to watch the downpour drag a charred bone along the interstate,
to follow in the direction the markings paved.
My name means more on the secondhand shelves,
where it arrives misunderstood
or let off leash.
****
Joshua Lillie is a bartender and musician in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the chapbook Small Talk Symphony (Finishing Line Press, 2025). He was a finalist for the Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest from Write Bloody Publishing in 2024, and a Best of the Net nominee in 2026.