Driving home from outpatient, a cry from nowhere pierces the hum. It’s my own gut-shot voice trailing blood across the windshield & dash, but I’m still surprised by it. Anxiety controls my sounds and movements like a cordyceps fungus controls an insect. More cries rush the hole made by the first so my throat becomes a fountain filling the cabin with locusts that die in mid-air and pile into drifts on the passenger seat. I’m alone, but I imagine someone watching my breakdown like I was a character in a show, because I can’t seem to process my emotions without involving someone else. This observer is more human-scale than twenty years ago when my wailing would have been prayer. I think the shape of these sounds is holier. Not supplication so much as islands erupting from an ocean. They will one day be habitat. The maps will need changing.
Chad Rutter is an emerging poet originally from rural Nebraska now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, both in visual art. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Right Hand Pointing.