A puddle in the shape of Africa, heart-shaped leaves and a crow eating a songbird for breakfast. (A pile of feathers and bones)

The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

That's what's always said. Wheel watched as all of the loud, grinding squeakers around her received fussing, money, time, attention.

Hello? She piped.

Shut up and be a good Wheel, they said back to her.

we run and the gravel crunches beneath my feet– you two are smarter and stay on the road itself, hard springy mud bouncing under your paws. we make strides with leaps and bounds. something scares me suddenly and i whip my head around under the glowing half-moon, scanning the forest with wide eyes until i realize that it’s only the wild turkeys– flying with brusque desperation into the treetops, finding their roosts for the night.

the sky is nothing but every shade of gray.

blue straw, service goose

black elder marion

with an olallie rasp.

There is the skeleton of a toy teddy bear in the texture-shapes of my bedroom ceiling. Never noticed it before this afternoon.

i dreamed that my phone was a banana; i was asleep and the ringing woke me up. Saw that it was my sister and frantically tried to reject the call, but the skin was so mottled i couldn't get it to work. So i ripped away the peel in a panic, but the fruit itself wouldn't register the swipe.