Shells, Shelter

They hide the ocean in a shell.
- Arcade Fire, "Half Light I"

It isn't fair how
little effort it takes
to swallow all of your heroes
and let them harden
in the kiln of your gut.
It is easy
to write about stars because
it is easy
to write about ignorance.
How can I trust my eyes
when light travels so slowly?

When the fire is out,
the inspiration is ready.
Be careful not to burn yourself.
That's easy, too.
One day, the antimatter
in your gut
will take those stars
and eat them.
How can I trust my brain
when antimatter and matter,
the yin and yang, the good and evil
are composed of atoms,
then strings
laced in and out of consciousness?
What good is reality
when it's hidden behind
layers of skin and muscle,
trapped in the universe
of one's body?

Zeta

How the universe began is a rhetorical question, a function or formula. It hangs off the New Moon after coming back, decades after circling Saturn, transforming, restructuring.

I pretend to count your eyelashes, each one its own universe. Somewhere, with child-like wonder, I’m counting the veins on a leaf, counting the spots in my eyes, hoping for parallelism and connection.

In all capital letters, I ask, and the questions always come back--return to sender. That’s the center of romance. The center isn’t the heart; it’s the lungs. It’s the breath it takes to ask, to aggressively strum the vocal chords.

The number of veins is twenty-five. The number of spots is forty-three. In my throat, the answers bloom, and I trace them to Jupiter, where they separate into two paths of philosophy--to move forward or backward, the feature of balance.

Nexus

The day I decided I was done with forgiveness was the day
the sun shined into my window,
and an angel told me not to worry,
that my enemies drank poisoned wine in the night.

The day I decided that I was done
with being seen and not heard
was the day that my hair caught on fire
and a prophet said it spoke to him and told him
not to enter the same kingdom as I entered,
not to face the same sky from whence I fell.

The wine was simple and sweet, like the temperament
of a certain child, before the nest in her hair sparked,
and the birds flew from it, frightened,
their feathers glowing red.

That was the day I was done,
because the nexus was broken.
Each bully dropped his glass, betrayed.
The god, the angels they knew
were simple and sweet, not wrathful,
and yet, here, they collapse,
killed by an unnamed moon, a child of Saturn,
a messenger, a follower of god.
At least, this is the fantasy.
This is the string of kerchiefs, emerging from the hat.
On this day, illusions and reality are the same,
and the only thing separating them, coloring them
just a little differently, is belief.

Transitioning

Despite the quiet, the chill in her chest
made an awful sound when she breathed.
It was like a short rattle
in a long, abandoned corridor.
Several years after the flood,
there was a threat of fire,
and once the secret was out,
that's when the chill started.
It lingered in the corners
of the room. It hid in the folds
of her dresses.
Eventually, it ended up
in the same place, creeping
from her brow to her cheekbone,
from her throat to her clavicle,
before resting in her chest,
between the second and third rib
on the left side.
She once thought
that the chill was a messenger,
warning her about condemnation,
telling her that it wasn't enough
to be kind out of context.
Maybe it's not enough to be good, she thought,
but her god had other plans for her,
and the cold moved from her ribs
to her stomach, where it stayed
until a seed grew there.
The fire never came,
so she lit the furnace on her own
and raised the child by herself,
a small piece of her rib poking
where the cold once lived.

Misgivings

I.

I am a tender thing, and when I am a tender thing, I chew on the fat of my misgivings. Small and jagged like stones, my privileges gather: visible, inconvenient, dangerous. They occupy the corners, the space between each tooth in my wanting mouth, wanting more of the fat, the stuff that lacks nourishment but maintains indecency and ample amounts of tenderness.

II.

I am well-intentioned, but I am not you. I do not know what you face. I do not know the ideas brewing in your brain, the shapes of injustice carrying weight in your own life. I am only a child, a tender thing, chewing on information, breaking my teeth on confrontations, confirmations of my being me, my being white, my being female-born, my being. I am a tender thing, because without missteps, without compassion, I am not myself.

III.

My privileges are also me, pieces of my broken teeth, and everyday, I try not to swallow them.