Sweat-slicked & torched spine, I awake, every
atom reaching for the cool dark—at 6
am, 5, when we turn back the clocks, fool
ourselves into thinking we’ll have more life.
Last night, I dreamt of blood, years of shed selves.
When I was a girl, I saw Venus through
a telescope’s glass eye. My father &
I, winter, & for the first time, the pull
of something hot & bright. I didn’t know
yet that each night moved us closer to death.
My body’s on fire, I say, in bed,
to my husband. Put your hand on my chest.
Touch the part of me that would burn itself
down here in the dark just because it can.
Here in the dark, I can admit—no, I’ve
never been split by child, two halves cracked
open, core offered to stars. I think of
my father & me in the driveway, red
telescope, Venus. How could I know then
each night carried us farther from this? That
was in third grade, year of my brief stint as
a Brownie—sashes, badges, the time we
collected leaves & all made the same art
project. And that day trip to Alley Pond
Park, where we stood in a circle, knee socks
& jumpers, toasted marshmallows. I looked
around at the trees, the fire, knew right
then & there I didn’t speak the language.
I couldn’t speak the language then, had not
yet learned fire makes us human, that our
hominin ancestors used it to hunt
rodents, lizards, eggs of birds. How heat can
expose, drive a body from the dark wood
into the wide open & make of it
an offering. When I was a girl, I
held the sun inside my body until
I burned dizzy. A party, Aunt Babbs, wet
washcloth on my forehead. When fire spreads
up my spine & into my chest, I throw
the duvet back until I’m cool earth, lift
it over me like an ice sheet. Ready
my flesh for what I know is coming next.
And, oh, I know what’s coming next. After
surgery, blankets clung to my baking
body, thermostat turned up to 80.
Every ten seconds, compression sleeves squeezed,
pushed the hot blood through my legs. How I begged
the nurse to deliver me from fire
& sweat, a spinning room, threat of air so
tightly woven around my breastless chest
that it might crush my bones to calcium
phosphate heap. Heat heals, my surgeon said, &
I recall that Twilight Zone episode
where the midnight sun is just a dream, how,
in reality, it’s drifting away,
nothing but dark & snowflakes in its wake.
How I longed for nothing but dark & snow
when I was a girl, caught in a fever
dream. Sun-struck & lemon-iced tongue, sour
stomach. I did not reach for but ran from
heat, twisted my small burning body, damp
legs tangled in bedsheets. When a star’s core
runs out of hydrogen, it begins to
implode. Now I am hot-blue spike of light
& pressure, unstable core & frenzied
fusion. A body gathering all its
matter. I’m on fire, I say, in bed,
to my husband. Put your hand on my chest.
Can you feel that? Touch what’s left of me here
on the bright red brink of total collapse.
On the brink of collapse, I remember
when I was a girl, a boy rode his bike
in the snow just to leave a Christmas card
at my door. On the envelope—my name,
all caps, heart drawn around it. How many
days were our faces left ice-stung, wind-burned?
In space, everything is cold. Scientists
call this nihilism. In other words,
it’s all a big nothing. And we’ve always
been cooling. Aborigines believe
sacred raptors gave us fire, have seen
them lift smoldering wood from one to start
another. O firehawk, god of first
flame, in your mouth, take this blazing body.
The body’s first fire starts in the mouth.
Take girl. When I was just that, I didn’t
know yet that girl was part of a large group
of words whose root ends in r, that final
consonant—a diminutive suffix
denoting creatures past their prime. So, by
definition, a girl is a small thing
added to the end of something else. When
I was a small fire at the end of
my mother’s youth, I held the sun inside
my body. How could I know, with each breath,
I’d expand & expand into a red
cloud of dust & gas, just to be big, just
to be the start, a part of, not the end?
If this is the start & not the end, if
this heat radiates into the outer
layers of me & I burn rust-red, let
my body be licked clean by flame. When I
was a girl, I stayed up late reading space
books, traced planetary nebulas with
small fingers, a want inside me throbbing
for that pink & blue stardust, its cotton
candy glow. When I was a girl, I was
just that. Not yet red giant, core pulsing
to the soft pull of distant stars. Not yet
body on fire readying itself
for implosion. A body that would burn
itself down just to get where it’s going.
My body burns to get where it’s going.
When I was a girl, I colored all stars
blue. I didn’t know yet that blue stars are
the hottest, most massive. Burn themselves down
fast in a fight against gravity’s grasp.
Until they can’t. Until there’s nothing left
to do but cool & collapse. I’m freezing
now, I say to my husband. Hold me here
in the dark until that violent blast, till
I explode this body in one blinding
burst, my core—whirling pulsar, beam-beating
heart. New star. And the shocking pink, the deep
blue-violet spun & seen across light-years
in space. Sweat-slicked & torched spine, I awake.