Alex Raykowitz

A Walk With Nature 

You say you wished it was a snake that bit him.  

I wish it was a snake that had bitten him.  

Wasn’t no act of the judicious serpent, hun. Just a tiny little tick taking a tiny hungry bite. It’s  one out of a billion other impulse functions reverberating across this great ecological cosmos  every minute.  

Maybe the tick is sick. Maybe it has a disease. 

No baby, it don’t. It’s just a normal, healthy tick. The man will be fine. 

Goddamnit!  

Hm. Where you from? You look like turkeys wandering a shoppin’ mall out here.  Chicago. 

Oh that sounds nice. What brought you here?  

Work. I work for him.  

The man you want to hurt?  

Yes. I’m furthering his research on the ways in which environmental pollutants in this region  have impacted plant physiology. The paper, our paper, is being published this month. That  scumbag isn’t putting my name on it.  

Well that seems like a shame.  

I deserve some recognition. I did most of the synthesis. But he refuses. I’ll be a ghost in the  work.  

You might should punish him then. There’s poison oak over not far. I can show you.  I regret helping him at all. The money wasn’t worth it. I just want this whole experience to end.  Oh honey. Never nothin’ ends.  

It can though, I learned. It will. If you make it.  

Hm.