By now, I know the color of sunset
through the backs of tight eyelids
is draining. I have witnessed
but never named the shadow
specks of my silent liquefaction,
these myopic eyes consuming
themselves like eyelashes catch dust mites
to keep them invisibly close.
When I’m down here, I find
even my tongue a leaden thing,
the fatty muscle curled against a shelf
of worn teeth stained the same deep dark
of soy sauce laced with star anise.
When I’m down here, I find trembling,
pressed to concrete as if in concession
there’s still human blood beneath
these pockmarked palms after all, look:
the flesh craters from every kilogram
on my skeleton fighting the drag of something
indelible. But see, aren’t the loudest heartbeats
still my heartbeats down here on earth,
where gravity takes us gratefully hostage or else
wouldn’t we slip right off this dirt-smothered rock
and slam our graceless bodies into the moon
but I don’t think we would feel it, not even a little bit
because we’d be weightless and wouldn’t that be
something, to exist as infinite as space dust
but today, like every other day, I am not yet fragmented
in the stratosphere and I must be too many miles from the moon
so instead I snatch gravity by the jugular and crush each fingernail in
to stone to spit sweat into its taunting mouth as I finally

push-up.