lichen

i come home from the bar so that i can become lichen on the floor. gin-logged and aromatic. hitch my bra on the door handle before resting supine, thallused. arch into a bridge pose and spin on my shoulder like a top until i am at risk of jettisoning myself out the window. this is the mating ritual between algae and the moon. though i am not an attractive pastel shade. in fact let’s not speak of my color until summer. i’d bloom more fruitfully in the bath. always comes down to the bath. for once can it be a swim or a shower? something more appropriate for putting out heads that are on fire. i shouldn’t prattle over orientations of water. rather the way that water spreads through the gills like butter across toast [thank you lady miss kay for making me think about this]. or that the moon is only blue with one eye closed [channel the concentration of the archer]. perhaps that time is a dartboard of things you remember [thwip, miss]. not about my beliefs of holism, and by that i mean that i am also the soap which devours me. you can’t bloom with that many thoughts. your body will grow in un-thallused shapes. like an array of cookie cutters. heart hypogymnia, star squamulose, flower foliose. hammered shield is self explanatory. when i was a kid we used to pluck usnea like roses, twirl it between our fingers like string, try to make friendship bracelets with little luck. the truth is that lichen makes me itchy, not from allergy but the indomitable brain itch. i imagine it infecting my skin, morphing my pores into puckering cups of organic matter, spreading across my body too rapidly to reach each tingle. i’m more partial to moss and its overwhelming softness, duckweed even more-so. perhaps because it floats—