Exile
In this myth, I’m queen of a capsized throne.
Robes thrown over my head are a curtain
of heavenly bodies — a personal planetarium
of ruin. My compass points north, when
the only direction I want to travel is home.
A place beneath the sleeves of a star
wheel, where plains become a borderland
of splintered skeletons. I carry these skulls
for centuries in a funeral procession over prairies.
I’ve lost my hourglass. Replaced it
with a secondhand sundial. But the moon rises
across my face. Too late. Tremors
radiate through my skull. Cold fronts crawl
over the balcony of my collar bone
as cosmic winds. & the web stemming
from my nose becomes a star-studded veil.
Another body shrouded in mirrored thread,
I’m fastened to a darkening desert sky.
Landlocked
What to name clusters of indigo beads blooming in my garden? Bluebonnet cousins? Starry stems? Steps away from my front door, an ocean breaks open. The door a caravel that carries me windward. & am I not homesick, yet? Rising with each current, I receive gifts of salt grapes, whale songs, & canyon winds. Less fear where water becomes prairie grass. I hold these hyacinths (now named) to my chest. Let my body be carried to their ceilinged sky.
Seams
When I exhaust all other forms of exploration,
this landscape will deny me at the border;
& I will turn my gaze toward a darkening
sky filled with stars I no longer recognize.
This is a realigning of the body, I imagine.
The horizon meeting an ocean & shattering
into shards of light that pierce this meat-
coated skeleton hurtling through space.
It’s all very dramatic against such a sound-
proof backdrop. I put on my skin inside-
out with the seams still showing. Creation—
bloodless veins embroidered over bone.
I’ll dance this coat into a familiar tapestry
but will be found out. Meteors cannot
erase the scars or satellites wandering
along boundaries of this planetary body.
