I text my friend, I’m an alienated worker in a brutal city.
On a podcast I am told to imagine
all the roads in all the cities
filled with plants and trees and paths for people to walk.
I imagine this, and it depresses me. I used to be fascinated
by the border between the natural world
and the human one
how one world
contains one world contains one world contains one world—
On the way to work the bus passes several parking garages.
I try to look at the sky instead and reflect on the intimacy
of touching thighs with a stranger.
After the rain I take the collar off Zadie
and imagine the nakedness she was born into, and my own nakedness, too.
Before I merge on a highway I prepare for emotional disassembling.
I make eye contact with a robin.
I take Zadie out for a walk and the streetlight elongates our shadows on the pavement,
and there is also the moon.
When snow falls for the first time, I go to the woods and pick three aborted entoloma
which are actually two fungi, one parasitizing the other.
I cook them, pushing them around the pan gingerly with a wooden spoon
Everyone knows parasite means eating at the table of another
Margaret Saigh is a writer, dancer, and educator. She is the author of the chapbook CROSSED IN THE DARKER LIGHT OF TERROR (dancing girl press 2022), a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, and the creator of circlet, a virtual poetry workshop. Her poems have been featured in Peach Mag and Poetry Online, and are forthcoming in Calyx and The Champagne Room, among others.