When I am alone, I am never truly alone. 

There are many things I must become

to give up my memory to a page.

I begin as a hound, stealthy and hunkering.

I chase a tail that is mine, but which I can never 

truly have. The key here is not what I find, 

but how long I may sustain a fruitless quest &

how much it takes to become an endless

circle. I next become a spider. I spin silk

to cure my loneliness, adding word

by word to a page until I have thousands

of creatures to keep me company.

Like a starfish, I lose a part of myself

before it comes back fuller than ever:

a stomach that returns like Mother Bird

with food to douse emptiness.

To write is to flesh out. To roll back

the skin beneath my eyes and trace an empty 

waterline. To transform the naked eye—

not with a telescope,

but with a firm reassurance of the eye’s own 

shape. How jealous we must be of pufferfish: 

empty in one second, full in the next. 

For a pufferfish, to be visceral 

is to handle poison. To know what I am 

made of and still treat myself with care.