Feral
BY JESSICA CUELLO
Why did I love her? Because I became her, followed her
on all fours. My face grazed the cradled spider in a cotton bed,
its web frayed on my finger: sticky, spun. The others didn’t see
me, she sunk on my chest each night. I never learned to swallow,
I chewed and chewed, forbidden to leave the table, grisly meat
in my animal mouth until the kitchen emptied, but she chewed
the sweet blade of grass and I the clover. My arms clasped empty
air and I woke with her, her purr my rasp. She pressed her velvet
belly to my calf. The others didn’t let me hold them. They named me.
They filled the plate and bowl, they bought the single pair of shoes.
She and I slipped inside the quiet room. We barely breathed, quick
to jump from breaking glass, tuned to the pinch in a voice, our hunch
of wrongs. The others didn’t let me peep, she mewed beneath a grate
until I found her: mutilated, undernourished. No sibling, no mother. Her
paws were dry magic beads. I touched them. All the love I was not allowed
to give in the human house, she let me. She let me touch them one by one.
Obedience
BY JESSICA CUELLO
For years there was no doctor
and when you went at last
he said you were underweight.
He instructed the mother
to feed you milkshakes
and she made one in anger
as if you were hungry on purpose,
purposefully skinny and ugly.
She set the single milkshake down
so it trembled
and never made another.
That is not true, said the mother.
It is I who was hungry.
It is I who carried you.
You knelt inside her like a replica.
Mercilessly you covered
your ugly bones. Your sweater
sleeves were large and long.
Decades later a boy wrote a letter
to say he loved you then.
He mentioned the sweaters.
He loved you so much, he wrote.
He loved the way you pushed
the sleeves up, bunched above
your elbows. You are glad he
never told you then, beautiful
boy with the gentle gaze,
ruthless as you would have been.
