Mackenzie Carignan
Planet
for E.P.
orb. how much goes inside. you can see the bulge, the protrusion, the swollen
abdomen that nearly whistles from tightness. but she goes inside just as far,
reaches in and pushes organs, intestines, diaphragm, bladder into the space
that’s left. there’s not much left.
today you kept opening my sweater like curtains and calling to the belly
below, as if out a window: “what are you doing in there?” otherwise, you watch
television and draw pictures of robots and abstract collections of shapes
you call “the universe”. unintentionally, one of them looks like a placenta
connected to an umbilical cord with a triangle at the other end.
the looseness hangs and folds back on my own vision of her.
in the last few moments before you sleep, we talk about your bones
in the lilac twilight. you are interested in how they contain our organs,
how our ribs cage our heart. you mention dust and from that word, I feel my
life slipping away in such small particles, death suddenly stark white and
making its way in. your ice-blue eyes slipping closed back, back into your head;
your sister, a round fist lodged in my hip. we lay like bridges that circle,
spin, constellate. unintentionally, you curl around me like yet another limb,
pushing slightly in.
