Don’t worry about the splinters
from your throat. For you,
I will be a girl as much as lightning
is a girl. With inherited loom, I will
weave myself a cloak, out of
language, whose fabric:
taffeta, and velvet, and layers of lace
pressed across my lips. Tiresias beat
a snake and became a woman; I defer
to your language and am
a mountain/ a skipping stone/ an echo/
as much as a woman.
At night, we are astral, singing
in microbes, fighting through the decay
of our skin cells to be reclaimed into oaks.
The bed frame as much bone as our skeletons,
the sheets as much skin, the room
and the house dissolve
into atmosphere. Come morning,
the world solidifies and we stand
with one leg propped atop a boulder,
telescope in hand, delineating
all Creation with vocabulary. Sky is
sky, man is
man, mirror is
mirror, but
also myself,
except I am not myself,
or any other reduction.
Down the street,
stop lights blur into
constellations and
a snake
melts into God.
Artwork by Rina Sakurai