As I inhale,
I catch your breath
next to mine in the hallway,

your hands
are covered in blue veins
and you tell me
about the amygdala
and the chemicals
in our brains.

I tell you how
there are subtleties
in the dark coronaries,
there is a linger
that assembles in the blood
before it takes in the breath,
there are secrets to the cells
and the capillaries.

Your hands are shaking
a small bit, pale and blue,
in the middle of the hallway.
I grab them,
you close your eyes,
I know you wish you were elsewhere,

but you must remember
this life is a caricature
of biology;
we are all elsewhere -

I wish I could tell you,
that all I want to do is stratify you,
lay you out across millennia,
until you are everywhere
in every rock
every mineral.

Tell you to remember,
our birth is before the first day;

we are
                        the light
   before
    the dawn breaks -

we are circulated
me and you,
like breath,
like the morning star,
effortlessly,
orbiting -

do you think we would fall off
if the earth stopped spinning?

“I do wonder
if there would still be oxygen”