Life is a short thing, the flies that
buzz around my room will
stop their droning gaggle in a day
a day or two, anyway.
The large gourd-shaped hulk who
bellows beneath the depths has
over 200 years, that lucky thing and
when my son tugs at my
pant leg, and asks me why my
hair starts to look like the
feeling of a key ring, silver and
weighed down by things,
I read him a book about whales and
hope that he will not ask
how many whale lives I have left
but how many fly lives I have.
Life is a long thing, when starfish
lose limbs, it’s usually just
because they’re a little warm, it’s
their small discarded sweater
but when I get a little warm at night,
my body shoved by invisible
currents, I sit in the cavity of the couch
eyes falling like stars from
when I used to stay up all night and it was
an act of joy, instead of a lonely,
slow-moving river that just pushes me
towards when that orange strobe
rises above the water line, when my eyes
clench from its brilliance and the bones
in my body have not fallen off like the starfish,
they have never felt so weighted.
Life is a short thing, because the
macaroni penguins, they mate
for life, and my son and I were watching
discovery channel discuss Antarctica,
a place that feels like running out of time,
at the end of the world, something
like me, and he turned to me and said that he wished
I were a penguin so I didn’t have to be
alone. I said I’m not alone, I have you.
And he smiled the same smile from when
he visited his first zoo and said “I have
you too” and the narrator talked on.
