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. |