I can hear your heels clap the porch

Like you’re trying to find the harmonics of the wood

Like you’re trying to squeeze the air between

The planks just to make them whistle

The wind between these felled skyscrapers wherein

The wood beetles have come to roost

I wonder if you can see the holes in the spruce

Or if my blues have simply willed them to be

And I wonder what am I to do

With the woman dancing at the door

When you pass

God-forbid

When I right myself

I plan to

Take your form

Into the planet

And place this globe

Upon the celestial sea

Send it off

With a small puff of breath

The space Viking burial

Your vessel still lacking

For everything

You mean to me

But I suppose

We take what we are given

And I for one

Will make sure

This ball will burn

Like butane

So that you can warm this galaxy

Like you have warmed mine

And when you’re finished

Having burnt to powdered ash

Your fire cold

I’ll stir you into the waters

And let your atoms sweeten the rain

I wouldn’t dare swim in water so muddy

For surely such a murky place

Is home to things far worse than

Alligators and crocodiles

Although I’m sure their eyes open and close—slowly

Above the surface with the silent creak

Of looming danger

But pour that muddy water

In a finely proportioned cardboard cup

With a lip smooth enough for the X Games

And then you can be sure

I’ll say fuck all to the waterlogged reptiles

That may at times haunt my dreams

And I’ll take it all down

Scales, teeth and all

Curating a viscous, bubbling swamp within my gut

That lurches and snaps at the morsels

Sliding down my gullet

Like the coming of the rain season

Sometimes I wake up

And someone’s dressed me

In tights

And a long sleeve

Having rolled me from their fingertips

Slowly, like a bowling ball let go from a child’s hands

Turning over, slow, with enough time

To bump into the rails that line the alley

Shake hands, catch up, say our goodbyes

And turn over slowly, still

Although maybe a little faster now

Having made that left turn

Onto the last stretch of Green Lake

Turning over, right down the center of the path

Almost careening now

Riding the great snake felled amongst the trees—

It’s alabaster scales dirty with time.

I shake limbs with every pillar in this prayer hall

Ask them if they know how to fill this hollow

I toss paws with the bears

Sing to the birds that fled for the rafters

And watch their feathers fall all around me

I crack my legs like used glow sticks, coaxing them to hum again