survivor’s guilt
Nebular bodies stranded on polyethylene spacecrafts,
are flying through saltwater oceans to search for planet Alphabet.
Forgotten already, how their forked mother tongue sharpens as they speak.
Twenty-eight letters are exiled to darkroom corners,
and to tarp-made slums for mislocated bodies.
Decorated in my discarded gifts, she undresses
only for nakedness to reflect back like a brown bruise on a white oasis.
Land-locked, they abandon spacecrafts for underwater baths,
to blind their bodies in ocular illusions of spectral symmetry.
But before she weaves tenderly into waterborne wrinkles,
age will hit her differently, and salt does sting
with effervescent memories of Mediterranean baptisms and homemade lovers.
A life sentence.
Wounded— they fly again on their excavation for a birthplace,
she’s reimagined her nudity like rich, dark soil. She thinks—
compacted they can bloom Lilies,
and open up like something torn apart.
Here, I want to re-dress you with a planet,
where languages are only spoken without alphabets;
unpermitted to write down;
impossible to birth a king, or his king of kings;
Here, ownership reimagined— is permission to live.
But where we are, all I offer are shared exchanges in darkroom corners,
my over-worn gifts to live your what-ifs through,
and adopted anger that serves you none.
Nebular bodies on polyethylene spacecrafts are flying through saltwater oceans,
ready to split their tongues into Latin lisps,
or swallow it whole for French meals,
or alas…
cut-it off entirely so their language can survive you.