Oh, how it were!
Cutting a swath, a blank,
A stone resting on-chest; shadows dark on the wall
The hum of outside, of red windows.

I felt my heart pat like a rabbit’s,
A deep blue pulse inside me, but not mine,
A levitation, a placelessness:
I was Me, but only in the sense of the flesh.
I inhabited my body, but not my Self.

How useless are fingernails
When they are the only way out!
Claws shrunken and softened-down,
To scratch, to draw a single bead
Of cherry-red blood: for I did not hurt,
Could only push.

I awoke and my thumb was red
And my arm counted thirty-three
(Soon to be more).
A child, chewing her way out,
Hushed, hushed, pushed back into sleep,
Consciousness-gone-black.

Were I there, now.
That was not Me. I think.

little spider crawling 'round amidst amongst between.
pins and pins and needles and
gentle over-skin caress and
deep rich honey laugh
dark and strong and sweet and
stop it and
no and
honey-laugh again.

What I... owed you, what I did not owe you, what I saw, what I could not see, what I thought and could not think – for there was nothing left, only a cold black line, leaden in the back of my throat, or a twist of white, curled into my palm
(nothing to grasp at, teetering, riding along the precipice)
I dreamt of moving through crystals, shafts of them, beams of light reaching out radiant: and the two of us were climbing through windows and windows – you boosted me up, I grasped and pulled – my body was fleshy and not at all light.

the swell and the recession: gone, pulling, rippling below,
And then left behind, a hole in the air: the emptiness. the grief. the dust, maybe, or a dry lake, warm and dead.