I take a train to the moon and sunbathe
in its lunar seas, wringing sodium out of gills,

pleading for a gentler revolution. Before me
are rivers of cosmoid scales — the ruins of

dead fish, extinct fish, regretting fish —

as if stasis dipped into motion & urged them
to stop swimming and herald evolution.

Here, the earth is quiet. Here, mortality passes me by.
I wonder if they will call me moon goddess; if I will

chisel away a past life with carving knives

and grieving. Brownian motion, vertigo; stay steady:
the body is a hearth of hurts that refuse to heal. Fossilized,

torn ligaments never mend but replaster and redefine.
Millennia later, I am still here, untangling the otolith

out of my ear as I count how every ring

of bone numbers the good years gone by.
Radiation pierces, draping the plain with light —

cuticles of calcium glowing to say: Koi scales
are meant to be shed. Dreams are meant to exhaust.

I toss bone into dust. It spins and remains.