I have done my best to wilt, and
and everyone around has taken note
and celebrated
When they look away, I bulge my small pockets
with empty wrappers but if I’m clever
I hide them in the trunk of my car to deal with later. 

I never sense when the surge
in the pit of my belly will creep up again,
but when it does, as it did tonight,
I have learned to gulp enough of the night air
to stop it from pinching my voice

In my car, I make the one right turn home
and wish I could pour enough
of the black sky down my mouth.
I imagine I take a glass straw and
puncture the atmosphere
drinking the whole milky way
so deep into me
I can taste the hot gas of stars and
feel them singe my soft pink tissue on their way down

It is the first thing to taste delicious this whole year.

My eyes become two giant glass telescope lenses
bending the light to grasp a glimpse
of a new planet in a new universe.

In this new universe, I am unbothered and alive.

And I long for magic,
or a portal machine,
or a wish fulfilled by a shooting star

I crave it so bad I am tempted to pray
before I bend the light so far back it
snaps spilling across the night drive home.

And the part I have wilted in me
grows frantic
running in the folds of my brain,
down my spine, so fast
it almost escapes my mouth

I place my hand over my chest and
feel it shaking