koalastothemax

said i’d stop looking at my phone so much

and i mostly have but can’t seem to pull my eyes away from thirst traps

maybe not the kind you’re thinking - kylie jenner supine or prone exposed buttocks exposed breasts overexposure

but the kind where thirsty koalas running from a hazy flaring inferno consuming the landscape consuming their arboreal shelters

guzzle water from bottles proffered by hikers and saviors and passing cyclists

puddle collecting on my pillow send thoughts & prayers

but also tears to sate their thirst

as if they might transmute into something drinkable 

instead of leaving salt trails down my wind chapped cheeks

crystalline stains on my soft pillow

shaping my brain around the details of the petite marsupials

storm cloud gray or fawn brown or marled with white

cartoonishly large noses

fuzzy whiskered  fuzzy eared vessel smelling of eucalyptus

though i’m uncertain i’ll parent

trying to steel myself for a not-so-distant future

where my kids’ kids’ kids

or my kids’ kids even

will only know of koalas in the same mythological detached way that we know of

dinosaurs and dodo birds and wooly mammoths 

only they won’t be preserved in ice but in instagram vids