I feel I have survived something perilous
when I tell my friends about him
like I have wrangled a bucking bull
who has, by the grace of God, decided to behave himself
for the buyers. We admire his pelt together,
then imagine him chopped up and plated,
marbled with fat and butter.
They compliment the way I stuff him
with beer and wheat.
It satisfies the butcher in them.
Other times, I feel I have been taken
from a cold sea when my friends embrace me.
I gulp salt and air, emerging
from a momentous wreck.
They are fishermen looking
for a reasonable dinner,
but I am no fish. I am still
embarrassingly human, freshly netted,
wriggling, gasping, fretting purple
above an unspeakable depth.