hollow spaceships

if bodies are water,
can we use osmosis
to transmit words
across gradients
of our deadened
nerves?

the channels are closed,
and never is there an impulse
not carried out by a spine
stretching vertebrae
by vertebrae
as my fingers
brush the floor—

can you feel bumps
like ridges,
fingers entering
caverns, chasms
between

and mountains
steaming under the sea
where i imagine us hidden
from the sun’s rays

my first love was skinny
jealously i called her
a stick, her spine
retreated inward
a long valley
down the
mid
dle
of her back

i craved the bones
protruding through
skin, wanted a cave
in my collarbones and
that basin in my hips

to hold my share of the ocean—
for all my emptiness
i will need a trench

i want to feel the weight of standing
at the foot of a mid-ocean ridge

i’ve always stood one foot over the edge,
haunted by the thought—would i step off

and what if i would?

i’m haunted by the memory of the split (in me)
and far north: the sunlight, 24 hours awake—
(you could escape the sunset)

& what if i really would?

the crack between would only increase—
me, thinking, i could, so easily

sparkling snow fell. i fell
into winter, wondering—

(language comes easily
with you) i wish we were
in love. we would have it all,
wet and frigid seeping
through my toes—
i cannot feel

my fingers (feel them for me)
& see how bright the world is,
how empty the expanse is—

my mind is an endless
axis of unformed points &
more dopamine connects it.
nothing corrects it;straight
into bloodstream, cross
barrier to brain.

all the neurons in the world
couldn’t make sensation
return.

but the deer are beautiful, aren’t they,
scurrying at the softest sounds though
so much snow pads the ground.

with you i built a
crevice, held us at a
plateau in between
and i am staring off its edge.

silver coated masks descend, frozen ammonia materializes as
dirt and grass. still lips tilt to smile, bodies roll down
concave spaces. my own body is a concave space,

and in one bundle, i am caressed. awareness builds a
barrier, some impenetrable area to crash
and collide, make starbursts rushing

to the other side, because i insist i belong to condensed
methane and ice, and in my dark place, blue storms
rage, far as i can grasp—material warped,

molded, merged, wrapped like a burrito made of
universe. still i’m enchanted by the
perfect parabolas of our falls,
advancing whether to rock or
sand or dust.

we are in boxes; we lay in fragmentation.
the words we spoke to each other, too,
were separated by 1 line in 2 dimensions.

when i kept you, my fixation
was on the alien—

full of idealism, complex and strange.
i imagined a desert planet and binary suns
where our souls could intertwine

and the world grew dry,
all my layers wore away.
for hours &hours

i shuddered to the rhythms
of bodies against bodies;
thoughts

against thoughts. Silence
could not explain my love
of metaphor;

we could not create an envelope,
only looked across a barrier:
just you, me, & this brick
wall (between us)

body and language:
no intersection.

dew crunches beneath my feet
—time crystals, freezing; we are
weaving through an intricate

tapestry. forward movement
pushes another footstep , an
other entanglement in strings.

all night grass waits so morn
—ing we stand at the opened
mouth of the valley , wait ,

for its fog to enter the body. i
cannot conceive of these globes
of water reflecting everything

about your form, which holds
me tight and constricted, yarns
coiled around limbs ; all night

laying awake i saw nothingness,
never appreciating its void, its
depth , now we look into

it. let its emptiness tame you,
hold its sleeplessness close to
your chest. i hear birds in my

head, see the day caked in
florescence.  i am becoming
addicted  to         silence.

The secret is what counts,
the secret brings the greatest thrill,
and that’s what she told herself
when sparkling spindly beings landed

in her backyard
and with long cold fing
ers sent paralyzing tingles

& in her human heart
she decoded
vibrations
pressing heavy on her chest—

we’re here to take you
back to your home planet.

Upon awakening,
she tried to recall the ship,
knowing
hollow, round means
uterine, safe
(vacant)—
elongated, like a cigar,
means phallic.

She needed only to sit
naked in front of a
mirror.

Solace came the night
of the Perseids;
she’d look into the sky
and upon the eighth meteor
wish herself home

thinking,
maybe next life—

still in dreams
when she
melted she
coalesced
she thinned;

her outlines shimmered
and faded.  She sank
naturally as though
she were taught and
as no one had before,
unlike in this shameful

human body with its 3
holes arranged like blinking
lights on a flying saucer.