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The Day We Thought The World Was Ending
The sky was not falling that day but your mind, trickling down and out your ears,
unstoppable the way atoms split and multiply as coffee beans in
a grinder, the way spiders lay eggs in the tips of bananas only
to have the offspring devoured in our breakfast before the legs can break the sac.
As is the hostile nature of her uterus, the bean sprout within, the yolk, the
placenta accruing bones, the pollution in her abdomen, the corruption
coming up and out her mouth, her bedroom now a swamp and the worms have taken
over. Where now are the wolves to inject the poison into the ribbons of
our arms, the veins that make up the auras now sharing blood with the trees; listen
to the stanzas of caffeine, the coffee is our blood, our body. Awaken, we
forever rise to fall, fight the daylight, acquire the burns of living. Please
give me love words to hold in the throat, thirsty from the passage of air. I will
return the favor and pocket your fingernails with piano keys, our dogs' teeth,
turn rage into moth balls and isn't it beautiful the way dust covers the light,
those motes of energy, the sea monkeys who dominate the air. Cinders
fall in place of snow and still we drink the coffee black, wear sunglasses indoors
and pretend to be cool. He sits under the tree to watch the sky, divining
signs from the raindrops, from the shapes the clouds assume when games of tag become
tiring. Our hearts are still beating in place of the wind, the hairs that cover our arms
take over hills. Your eyelashes bend under the weight of air. Our dreams are stillborn.
Gina is an English major at community college, unemployed, and a volunteer at the local zoo. She is also a liar, but not a drug addict.
