Monica Rico
I don't dream I'm nature's
dusty sun. Often, I first
look out a window and I'm certain of the green
blanket of land I've tried to sleep on twice. Is
this separation of body and breath what makes gold
shift hands, decorate a rocket, her
exterior a recording— the soundtrack to humanity or at its hardest,
graffiti of a man and a woman. The sketch and hue
of their simple shapes another dark line to attach meaning to,
a set of advantageous languages to hold
or die. Two humans blessedly indistinguishable, except for the eye of her
belly, a spiral of cells held in gestation too early
to contend with gravity or the pause of a leaf
suspended, before returning into itself. When is
the complaint of my form more than a
voyage of vice I capture like a ripe flower
on the verge of tumbling toward earth, but
not forever like the swift reel of memory. Only
once is the slip, made easy under so
much rain. A collection of will. An
income measured by legend instead of the hour
I began to coat the walls with every last dove than
the equation for photosynthesis trapped in a leaf.
The quick tug of silence subsides
from articulation of pulse. Always better to
start over than to never start again said the leaf
near the oblivion of a collapsing red giant, so
depleted of its hydrogen it decided to Eden
itself— a late happy birthday and the candles sank
into the knees of the cake. To
start singing would be ridiculous. A party of grief
could easily crush a hotel of a brain, so
eager to book each guest and kick them out at dawn.
I wouldn't know what to pack. Nothing goes
with gamma rays, each wave a splash down
in a dream with too much spark to close my eyes to.
I don't like how the planet rotates and shortens the day
I keep waking up earlier, nothing
but a screech owl to distinguish between night and morning. The fall of gold
butter in craters of sourdough keep me alive today, and I can
begin to understand why I want to stay.