saltamontes
I guess I gotta mow the lawn
in the middle of december or
when the grasshoppers aren’t fleeing for their lives
and I’m panicking
wondering if the bits of green leaping
from the blade
are cellulose or slices
of limb, wing, antenna
can’t do the pretending
that life doesn’t scream at me
in all its preciousness
that i haven’t imagined a million ways
a body can be torn apart
Is it the god in small things or
the god of small things?
either way
I need to stop talking about god
as if I believed in any
as if I weren’t haunted by them all
as if we didn’t play god on the daily.
We put down poison
for the roaches
tiny and multiplicitous, ubiquitous
they ran around for days
and then started to stop running
wings beginning to mangle, accordion,
but I heard no music
you jumped
leaped
climbed mountains
for this?
Gaby Benitez is a queer, xicanx, neurodivergent writer in her quarter-life-crisis living in her evergentrifying hometown of Austin, TX. She writes to make sense of her experience living in this tumultuous world, to make sense of the ways we relate to others, the earth, the cycles of life and death. Much of her writing is through the lens of the body as a borderlands, meeting place, and interdimensional highway for these pathways of connection. She is obsessed with watersheds, and water, and the flicker of sunlight on its surface, and with the way the elements tie us all together across space and time and universe. Would have coffee and sweet plantains for every meal if given the option. She can be found on instagram @gabriellebenitez or twitter @gaygardengoth