Last Rabbit in Grosse Point

this is my quiet survival
horror, my strategy guide stored in puzzle
boxes beneath my twin bed. white noise
 
drifting up from the lake and down
calm streets
through my television haze. unwritten
in the static, I’m still lost in those suburbs--
 
the flowered pathways rotting sweet
in the neighborhood watch, silhouette in the window
next door, a pink rabbit,
searching in circles for health kits
around the naked trees, the delayed smell of smoke
 
everywhere. I’d bike by
my old high school softer than my earliest
jumpscares, listening between
streetlights. the oncoming roar of a train
never arriving. the whisper of a ranch-style home
surrounded by gawkers. a tornado siren call,
a distant wail. in this placid cultspace,
there were no save points. only holes
 
disappearing. I never found a map, could only run
in circles. there were only hints of a monster
in the occasional shout
 
the next block over, billowing out the locked flesh
farms beneath family manors, a candlelight
vigil within the hooded labyrinth
of our domesticated sins. it waited for me
somewhere in the fog. I waited for it
to get me, grind me up in the lull. that train never arrived.
 
I’m alone here now, waiting
in this special place. the radio is dead
and the smoke is in my bedroom. the rabbits lie wilted
on the rusting sidewalks. it’s a quiet neighborhood.
it’s a restless dream just out of sight. it’s easy
to disappear here. I’ve seen it in loading
screens and discarded newspaper
scraps. though silent, I know what it looks like
now. when I last checked
my strategy guide, the pages had gone blank.

Victor Shaw is an undergrad poet person at Wayne State University over in Detroit. You can find more of his poetry in Vagabond City, Maudlin House, and issue 10 of NU LIT's MICRO//MACRO. You can also gift Victor the lifeblood of validation @pajamashaw on twitter. Ask me about my hourglasses.