On sad days we'd go
to the planetarium.

We'd put on that
helmet of stars

and hardly anything
falling could hurt us.

The gods ran
back and forth

between
our houses—

like those dogs
who pretend

no one
has fed them.

Why, she keeps
asking, because

she is three
and still

believes
there are reasons.

Take me
to your leader,

I said —
so they’d know

how hollow
it is

to be followed.

A ball of wax
is the whole
ball of wax,
no matter
how small,
no matter
how soft
or hard,
or how
many
rooms
it fills
or fails
to fill
with
light.

I didn’t want
a wedding—I
wanted cake.
I didn’t
want cake
so much
as I wanted
those figurines
atop sweet tiers.
I didn’t want
the figurines, not
really. What I
wanted was
to be them—
hard and plastic,
machined
into being
with another,
as alive as
an ornament
can be,
on a sea
of buttercream,
someone taking
a bite of me,
someone thinking
I might be real.

In another
life, I’d
want this one.

We carried our spears
as far as we could.

We thought they
could teach us

something—something
pointed and sharp.

Life is hard,
the spears said

to the dark, which
listened, wishing
their tips were stars.

Everything I need
to know I learned

in the ice age—
how cold cold

is, how
lonely extinction.

They said we
were human

shields—

they who
were human

spears.

At last the first
trucks have been

let in. How nimble
the living are, how

quickly they shift
gears in their lories,

how many can
we fit in, one asks

another, speaking
of bodies where

people had been.