Riding An Elephant Poem by Indigo Hawkins

Dim burst blue, and I thought of you, chickadee,
baby bird, little weasel, little bird bones:

turning princess into the sparrow into princess into
the sparrow into princess— so narrow, such hollow bones

to be eaten, chicka—chick, chick—baby
buffet, and they say hurray! C’mon, don’t be a killjoy.

She just can’t thrive on rumpled roses—can’t sleep
with failed empathy seeping out her ears
Story—
a Story—
her Story—she sits
playing her Story piano.

Strains of Schubert diving into a circus
Den: a rich, dry, safe smell where colors
are elevated into animals, the beauty of us
I can feel in their bones—

flashes swept away with
Hope—all that frail excruciatingly fragile
open-ended

gleeful numbness derived from despair—
when all the images of us end up as empty
vessels bashed, broken open, words dashed like dreams,
(or brains) over wallpaper I don’t understand, I don’t know the design, why us,
why us, why. Why their world. But listen.
This is the lesson of the weasel:

In real life,
There is no real life.

Not all of us die.

Life can be sweet, if you learn
how to take the joy,
and not just the sorrow,
from the memory
of each uncollected kiss.

I want a happy ending, and damn it.
We’re going to live one.