Whoever loved me has left

behind darting particles in my mind’s eye,

like how flares over the north pole

are just fleeting caresses from our nearest star.

An artist said the best space is an empty space,

when you fill it with things it loses its potential.

But I’m scared of empty spaces; cold rooms,

wide oceans and deserts with nothing to reach to.

Every day I feel the need to carve up 

the brown earth of my face,

smooth it down, refine stone into diamond

for untouchable gemstone people.

Boys who preen and laugh, women searching for  island paradise,

digital men I wish only to exile with a brick.

Maybe, deep down, I wanted it all to go

up in a pillar of fire, ten thousand feet tall,

igniting the atmosphere just so I could say to someone:

I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the second-to-last man on earth!

Because I know I can’t trust my own standards.

When I thought the only out was out, I found myself

slipping like a yolk into new casing;

passing, seeping, orbitally returning

annually—like a summer storm

to wash the city with floodwater.

I think it’s become cliché to say a woman is a force of nature,

but the quiet earth opens up 

like a seasonal flower or hungry black hole

and sun releases sun.