there’s a rabbit who lives in my ribcage.

​

he tucks up tight in the space under my heart, and he sleeps. and I don’t mind him, most of the time, just a familiar weight in my chest.

​

he wakes sometimes though. wakes and wriggles among the squishiness of my organs. he presses down past my diaphragm and settles lower. my stomach flips as he flops down atop it. but hmmm, no.

​

he readjusts.

​

powerful hind legs strike my gallbladder, and I cough and grimace at the rush of bile in my throat. then he is settled. I spit into the sink to clear my mouth.

the tiger cub who prowls the width of my pelvis notices the rabbit soon enough.

​

she weaves through the tangle of my intestines to reach him, and the cramps make me groan. the rabbit watches her approach warily, but he doesn’t move.

she sniffs at him.

​

decides, apparently, that the scent of him, of my blood and flesh on him, is good. kin to hers, I suppose.

​

she rubs her jaw along his long ears, chuffing, and he relaxes again.

​

I’m not often fond of the tiger cub, too bitter about how she sharpens her claws on my hipbones and kicks restlessly at my uterus, but even still, it’s nice to have my beasts getting along. it’s certainly better than when they don’t.

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the snake watches them from a distance. she’s settled along my clavicles for the moment. the slim length of her twines around the bone, while her head rests in the too-loose socket of my shoulder. it’s uncomfortable.

​

better than when she climbs further up though.

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I don’t like when she does that. the constriction on my windpipe makes me panicky, and her whispers and the flicker of her tongue against my pulse don’t help the feeling.

the ants pay the others no mind, of course.

​

they’re perpetually busy with their own goings-ons. always expanding their colonies, boring through my cartilage. it aches, as perpetually as they work. but they mind their own business, and they never mind when another of my beasts crushes a force of workers. 

​

there’s always more to replace the fallen.

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it’s easy enough to forget about them. or rather, to let them fade into the background. they’re never quite forgotten. 

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no, not with their widespread ventures and the tingling sensation of tiny, marching feet mapping paths across every tissue they can reach.

the bat gets forgotten often though.

​

he lives in my skull. pressed into my left orbital socket, tight in the gap behind my eye. he’s always sleeping.

sometimes I wonder if he’s dead. a delicate little corpse hidden away next to my brain.

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but I think I can feel him breathing, perfectly in-time with my heartbeat.

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and even though he never moves, just the pressure of his being, wedged as he is, is painful.

​

if I’m being honest…

                     it’s all painful.

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