Your Bite Is Poison

In the tall dead grass you wait

Silent coil, patient hate

Silver eyes that never sleep

Tongue that tastes the air I breathe

I was small beneath the trees

Learning how to move unseen

Every path I tried to make

Curled beneath your shadowed wake

Slow hiss in the leaves

Cold breath in the night

But foxes learn the hunter’s way

Sharp little teeth, quiet prey

You circle slow, you strike so sly

But foxfire burns behind my eyes

You spill your poison in the dark

Thinking you'll swallow my small heart

The forest watches, thin and still

Foxes bleed… but foxes kill

Through the briars, through the frost

Counting every trail you crossed

Cold shadow beneath the pine

Always just behind my spine

Every whisper in the ground

Warns me when your coils come round

Every broken twig and stone

Says the fox is not alone

The grass bends

Something moves

A flicker

A shape

Not prey

(hiss)

You thought

I would run

(slow breath)

But foxfire burns

Now the hunter feels the flame

Foxfire crawling through your veins

You writhe beneath the watching trees

But you’re the one who fears the leaves

You thought the dark was yours to keep

Every root and coil and creep

But listen close beneath the wind—

Foxes bite in the end