on this banquet of roses
and licked clean
the golden dishes—
And when with cool brain
I have willed my body
to levitate,
head dangling like dead siren—
After the waters have risen
and the moon is reflected in one thousand
new places—
(including the pools
held in cupped hands
of rushed children)
I will suck the shells clean,
swallow kelp seeds, and wait
for a sea forest to grow
in my belly;
for sharp branches to push through skin
and quench their roots with blood—
Then I will rise,
a constellation made of eyes,
with dark hair curled delicately inwards
like petals dying.
