You Probably Think This Song is About You

           Benedicite, omnia opera Domini

Each eaten leaf, each feast or torrid horror, 
each set of eyes wet with panic. 
Each feathered tether snapped or boneless scurrying, 
each disarticulated jaw of python and suffocating embrace 
of paramecium, event horizon of cilia and enzyme. 
Each gutted fluttering, manic with lapsed vigilance. 
Each jolting from sleep into a dead sprint. Each missed hint. 
Each lost all-stakes race, each meeting 
between ceasing and hunger, each error of half-rest breath 
subsumed into the song-long arpeggiated terror. 
Each sweated death, each panting you feel 
and the fear you feel it through—
each white-hot life pulsing there, winded, 
wheezing down the back of your striped and shaggy neck.

“You Probably Think This Song is About You” Copyright © 2025 by Luke Scott Stringer ’18 B.A., ’23 M.A.R. With permission by the author.