I mean how can anything ever be the same again
after we’ve crawled out of the tear congenital from brain to sacrum
the blinding sun harsh on our newborn eyes as we
held a vigil for our discarded skin
it is a violent act, what we’ve done,
but nature doesn’t necessitate violence to be bloody
what I mean is does it have to hurt to mean something?
what does any of this mean, you asked
even though you knew the answer but I told
you anyway because you like the sound of my voice
the burial was on a Sunday, the world deadened
by meditative snowfall so thick the branches outside
our window bowed their heads in surrender
huddling together for warmth, we mourn
at the summit of the universe
below our feet the sprawl of light-years of spacetime
the mundane resplendent in quiet acceptance of what is
is what we’ve become another stretching of the
jaw, another ouroboric swallowing
a continual shedding of the old as the only means to save
ourselves from extinction, which is to say
an intentional metamorphosis into the present
to be in love is to endure a chronic cycle of rebirth
so we are Theseus, we are his ship and we are the ocean that will
consume the world when the nuclear bombs fall
after it is all over I promise I’ll recognize you
not by skin and sinew but by the song you’re singing
in a story with no beginning or end it must be true that
“happily ever after” is right now
*****
From Macomb, Michigan, Jason Li is a cancer researcher at a pharmaceutical company based in New York City. He has received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. His work has previously been published in Kalopsia Literary Journal.
