back SARA ELIZA JOHNSON
Lazarus
Through the mist I see as the first mammals
once saw through their forests, dark photons
translating light for them into shape:
shadow flower, shadow stone, the black ripple
of bees and the weeping blood of their honey
inside the trees. My first eye
stares back at mine
and into my chest pours a weight, an infinite
pressure somewhere inside my heart or left lung
like an extinction echoing backward into
the first cell of its animal, my body colder
in that spot.
A thumbprint blooms between my breasts
where a stranger once pressed,
and being so alone here
I open like a grave.
Asteroseismology
Lazarus
Wormhole