I believe I am the kind of woman. I believe I am the kind of woman. I believe I am the kind of woman. But as it turns out, even the universe will go dark in a trillion years. Forgive me.

◆

I wake to a pseudo-bird circling the ceiling — hummingbird moth — my knuckles strained around The Vindications, lepidopteran pulsing: an offering of knowledge or more likely, a weapon. The iridescence of moth wings transforms me into a new bird. New to the ultra-violet spectrum. Moth wings are a warning, not an invitation & I have never seen such colors. I wonder, am I the only woman following my nose despite my eyes?

◆

Picture the earth as a child, swaddled in the velvet of a supermassive black hole. Forgive me for butchering this metaphor.

◆

Couldn’t I stage forgiveness? I tell my mother-in-law not to pull the strawberries growing from her terrace like mice. Pull the white-top, leave
the vines. Wasps follow her glucose highway, the fruit bloodless as snow.

◆

My barometer for satisfaction hinges on how clinical I can make my memories. I draw my own evolution starting with primates, then as far back as lungfish. I work my way toward sponges — the prospect of a holy body. I understand little else, here, multiplying my own cells.

◆

Women might direct their pheromones if we were more confident pheromones exist. What more must bees and ants do to convince us? I watch a fly navigate my windowsill and think of brioche. Bulbous and glossy, my mouth waters at the slightest inhumanity. I triple-fold a tissue and wait for it to become a shroud.

◆

My expensive herbs wilt under the weight of imbibed plastic. The flecks in my tissue call out to the basil, concurring. What does it mean to be chemically obedient? To be the impetus for growth but not the process of growing? I dam my fantasies and microplastics in a fertile river, let them oxidize as the water recedes. The difference is in allowing disruption or causing it. The difference is we are secretly proud of our power to disturb.

◆

What kind of woman buries herself in a pasture? My friend asks me if I believe I’ve been here before, buried myself before. Yes, I think so. The enoki caps in her salad are hard to ignore.