I CAN'T LOVE LIKE A WILD ANIMAL

i can’t love like a wild animal

by karo ska from “loving my salt-drenched bones” CONTENT WARNING: MENTION OF NON-CONSENSUAL ACTS

once i was a lion prowling savannahs, seeking prey. what was love if not teeth piercing skin, digging into soft tissue, slurping up blood. once,

i was a starving seal swimming under melting ice, ready to eat anything that floated by. once a friend asked me if he could give me a massage, & i said, ok. & it turned into more. & he didn’t ask. & i didn’t know how to say stop.

once i was a turtle without a shell, all flesh, no heart, & i was left in the sun to dry out, & i knew i couldn’t love

like a wild animal anymore. couldn’t wake up on couches after drunken poker nights in the arms of men, who ate my lips for breakfast without consent. hunt by hunt,

i discovered the wildness of my howl & how it didn’t have to be a call for a mate. claw by claw, fur patch by fur patch, i grew not less feral, but less fearful of the beast roaming the woods of my bones.

now i crave burrowed connections & a hole in the ground i can call my own -- a self-love not built on the brutal urges of men.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karo Ska (she/they) is a South Asian & Eastern European non-binary poet, living on unceded Tongva Land. They migrated here in 1996 from Warsaw, Poland. Some of their other work resides in Dryland Lit, Resurrection Magazine, Sobotka Literary Journal, Cultural Daily, Ayaskala Magazine, and Marías at Sampaguitas. Their first fulllength collection, loving my salt-drenched bones was released on February 23rd, 2022. For updates, follow them on Instagram @karoo_skaa or check out their website karoska.com.

We don’t overcome trauma. We learn to live with how it shaped us.

In loving my salt-drenched bones, karo ska, a bi-racial survivor of child sexual abuse, is not afraid to tackle the topics we rarely talk about — anxiety, depression, suicide, racism, grief. Ska invites us to swim through the tumultuous rivers of healing and asks that we fall in love with our vulnerabilities. Through striking images and poignant metaphors, ska shows us the power of being our true, authentic selves.