POEM TITLE
Alternate Universe where my mother feeds me Oysters
POEM
in the wakefulness of my hunger for luminescence
i rifle through cities for lighthouses
forgetting that somewhere beyond the blackness on sea
i could be seen as the breath of a dragon
racing through walls of shuttered rooms. my body—
an unfinished arc of light, stretching to drown darkness
out of a nightsky. in an alternate universe
my mother is still alive, filling my mouth with oysters at the lobster pot
that burst open in my throat like star shells
i pretend i’m carrying their light inside me.
i tell everyone they’ve swollen into clusters of asteroids
& soon i’ll morph into a shooting star
jetting towards the doors of the lobster pot
with the tenderness of the hands of an archeologist
digging the ground for relics. my desire is to wake with
a robe of halo floating down my shoulders.
i want to exhale clouds of starburst when i breathe.
it happens that sometimes i am the scab of an exit wound
learning how to glow in the dark. other times
a shadow crawling its way back towards sunlight.