Honey-eater, Rick Hollon

CW: bodily injury including broken bones, scarring

Honey-eater marked my sunburn

shins split and granite battered

scratches on broken wrist and ulna

carried me teeth to sternum, pierced

a bundle of snapping twigs

I sprouted in fireweed, snowmelt

ran staircase down thighbone scar

my tongue in butterflies, my tongue

holding a secret name down my throat

sweet, confounded through pollen

Honey-eater, honey-eater eat

my name rigid in roots, calcined

larch and lodgepole skeletons

I bite your fur, I nurse a tangle

mycelium bound, sensitive cavity

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Rick Hollon (they/them or fey/fem) is a nonbinary, intersex, bi/queer writer, editor, and parent from the American Midwest. Feir writing has appeared or is forthcoming in perhappened, Whale Road Review, Moss Puppy Mag, the HELL IS REAL anthology, and elsewhere. Find them on Twitter at SailorTheia.