just before the third thunderclap of the year (3 boilermakers)

caught my blood in my hands, replaced it with rum and whiskey. let the beer carry it down. trapped outside’s summer fog in my head. reverse kettle. i have a gross desire to be looked at kindly. i have an astroid in my head. a crater in my pelvis. a conch shell in my throat. there is a riparian scream unlike my own voice, burbling with seawater not beer. dew drops in the windowsill. how much of my life is spent counting drops of water? thirsting for the dionysic quench. hiding from the shadows of my books…sensing the air tonight is my hungry lung. bleeding inside me is a permian lake. i have hungered for too far too long. hunger is a dog jaw around the throat, an ant mandible around an artery, a slipknot around the nervous system. fish suck up nutrients as bystanders. i photosynthesize in summer to hibernate. pluck at my ribs like cello strings. the other day i realized that this life without so much air is due to my ribs spreading with weight gain. sweat is another type of aqueous humor. i wish i could see myself without the sun obstructing the waves of sweat’s ocean. i wish i could hear tethys when i’m well. i wish i could trace my way back to the body that only worried about the tickle of a kiss on the collarbone. the body that swam 300 laps without thinking. the body that showed the altitude of its ribs to the sun without shame.