The inside of my chest is green,
or black, the color of sickened rats,
running off the boat to bite the land.

I've been off the boat for a while,
floating aimlessly in the moon-pulled tide.
That very body lights up the water like mercury,
a silvery current pushing me to shore.

I sing a song of disease. A song of satellites
and swimming, curling up in the water that's like
the long forgotten womb. I keep forgetting my voice
because there's solace in the silence. Refuge.

The planet will still spin, though. Time will
keep burying its sickly grey fingers inside my body.
The ocean will spit me out onto the beach, weathered
and confused. None of these things will remember me.
Nothing will, except the song that goes out into space,
a transmission to interrupt the solace of someone else's silence,
and they may thank me for it, but I'll never know.

03/05/2006

Posted on 04/12/2006
Copyright © 2024 Aaron Blair