the thoughts that once fringed my head
are blossoming into flowers
and spreading wide across my mind
i could stay here for hours and hours
3. i dip my fingers into your sky and
clouds are left in my wake
i am never quite
the brightest object
nor am i the biggest
but as i was created on great impact
that’s what i hope to leave, as well.
4. at first, i was content with being
the light that leaks through
cracks in broken glass
i know now that, even at my fullest
my gravity is too slight
to pull at any living mass
the moon, part one
1. i was born to
orbit you, a
greater being
bursting at the seams with
oceans and trees and
humans who used to
teeter just off the edge
2. they built ships and
from their mouths
spilled the strangest of truths
“now that we know we cannot fall,
we shall not be limited to land,
nor oceans”
i kissed their rippling tides and
pulled their boats across the water
i am laid out on a table by the world’s greatest ornithologist
after introducing myself as
a broken-winged jay, she
tells me to regurgitate every last thing that sticks to my insides like
salt water taffy
pellets are formed in the gizzard, and when dissected
reveal many tiny exoskeletons
i feel like birds have it easy
being able to discharge
the teeth and claws that scrape up their throat
as a means of permanent disposal
to have lost you is like
coming home after twenty years of
buckling knees and chest pains,
to have that one sigh of relief
swallowed by the sound of collapsing masonry
caterpillar
you walk with bare feet and your toes, curled
rooted to the dirt
every step measured exactly
as much as you can chew
every path you walk down
consumed by whatever is squirming its way
out of your skin
geometrid, earth-measurer
soft bodies with hardened mandibles
for someone who is so overlooked
for whatever is inside of you
i want to befriend
every inch of your body.
