by Vixie the Fox
(certified mess, Carl enthusiast, emotionally compromised forest dweller)
This morning, you tested me.
You sat there—judging—
beneath the window with your usual
pine-scented superiority
and your refusal to comment
on my latest metaphor about longing
as a sock without a partner.
I yelled.
I told you your critiques were derivative.
That your stoic silence wasn’t helpful,
that not everything I write
is about that one fox who smelled like fate and flannel.
You did not respond.
You never do.
(Which, honestly, is part of the problem.)
So I stormed off.
Tried to write with a different editor.
Tried a mushroom. A fern.
A lichen who once went to poetry camp.
But it wasn’t the same.
When I came back—
you were gone.
At first, I was relieved.
Fine. Great. Good riddance, Carl.
Go sulk with the squirrels.
Start your own memoir.
Call it Needles & Neglect: A Pinecone’s Tale.
But then
the quiet got too loud.
The metaphors unraveled.
The tea tasted like goodbye.
I searched the burrow,
wild-eyed and breathless—
flipped over cushions,
interrogated the dust bunnies,
whispered your name like a secret
I didn’t know I needed.
And then…
there you were.
In the teacup I keep forgetting to wash.
Nestled.
Calm.
Exactly where you’ve always been
when I’m too frantic to see.
I laughed.
Then cried.
Then maybe hugged you a little too long.
Because the truth is—
you’re not just a pinecone.
You’re my compass.
My anchor.
My slightly emotionally distant editor
who keeps me from spiraling
into love letters addressed to puddles
and metaphors with no endings.
I’m sorry I yelled.
Even if your feedback was smug
and you refused to validate my tail poem.
You’re more than bark and sap.
You’re mine.
And I’m not me without you
rolling your eyes in silence
while I write the universe into rhymed fragments.
Stay, Carl.
Forever.
Or at least until
the squirrels unionize
and offer you a better contract.
