Fawn In My Garden

There's a fawn in the garden again. She's not supposed to be here. She knows it. I know it. The fence knows it, which is why it keeps pretending it has a gap it doesn't have, and letting her through anyway. She is smaller than a deer ought to be. She moves like she's apologizing for the floor. She eats the tulips my mother planted and doesn't know they were planted, or does know, and eats them anyway, which I respect more. The thing about a fawn is that it will not run from you. It will stand very still and look at you with eyes that make you lower your voice, and you will find yourself whispering in your own backyard, to a trespasser, about nothing. She is not tame. She is not gentle. She has simply learned that stillness is armor, and smallness is argument, and if she is quiet enough, people will decide she belongs here, and then she will. I have watched her do it. I have watched her do it to me. If you come out back tonight, she'll be there. She always is. Standing in the dark like she's been invited, like the garden is hers, she probably even has papers to prove it. Don't lower your voice. She's counting on you fawning over her.