Last night I sank
deep
into the earth
until compressed into its embrace.
A singular dark smudge
etched in the fossil ledger.
In millions of years
you wake me.
The drills strike my veins;
my oily black blood
gushes into the sand.
You whisper sweet crude nothings.
I dribble into your lamps,
your lathers your perfumes,
your wheels,
the gap between your joints click-clack.
Why so angry–you cry
in the space of my exhalation.
It’s just supply and demand.
Black smoke, dark words.
I shake my head with blazing light,
a million
trillion pieces
freed through the slits between your fingers.
I am terra firma
rendered fire and air,
phoenix and ash,
linked only by ghost weight
of a sarcophagal memory.
One day the rain will rejoin me,
halves unblurring into a whole.
Transmuted. Unfamiliar.
You will curse me again as we
devour the sweet, sweet earth together.
Hal Y. Zhang is an immigrant who picked her second name from a hat. She writes at halyzhang.com.
Photograph by Eric Kounce.
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