We start first with the honeycombs
as babies, slipping whole past
our gummy mouths and tiny throats.
The sepsis is our insides preparing us
for the life ahead.

We mooned our heart in orbit,
illuminated our paths with orchids
blooming in the dark, fertilized
with the fate of our star. If the sun
were the source of all life, our moon is
its soul, a new world curled around the old,
words of protection, a silver shine
of direction.

They named me Diana,
they vilify me on their news reports,
they say that I’m insane, a category five
of wind and spinning rain, and they’re right

I am a vertebra crowning
Sevilla’s ghoulish horde.
Ribs on a chandelier
in Prague. Ten fingers
twitching in ten churches.

The swirling colors of space and time
float by the windows of the generation ship,
a whole city—planet—galaxy unto itself
soaring past aeons of stars

She uncovered her voice from her bed,
loaded the verbs,
stirred up the interjections’ beehive;
she gathered the air in her lungs

i drew a smiley face on a blank page & gave it legs / there is no wind strong enough to destroy something that only exists on paper / there is no hurt powerful enough to tear

apart this cage I call a body / i have made this shell for you with my hands / & maybe death only comes when our souls outgrow our bodies / like hermit crabs — we drop

do not forget to drag your feet, my darling,
for the road is long and the trees cannot protect you here
and though their hands may urge you forward
look behind,

you could still pretend for a while. Perhaps it wasn’t even pretend—your body still remembered home as a pause between your third and fourth ribs; remembered an absence of walking across a bridge, in this city you’ve chosen as refuge, and keening the surface tension of water."