He posits this just as Cristina prepares to leave.
When she reminds Meredith that she —
not her dreamy, neurosurgeonwiththegoodhair husband —
is the sun, the nucleus of potential,
the brightest star, the possibility
of destruction. I had always seen myself
as Cristina, but in this metaphor, he has cast us
both as Meredith, blind to our own solar energy.

If he is the sun, then I am bioluminescent
plankton, aroused primarily by my own hand.
Then I am mold & fermenting yeast & mushrooms
sporing in a gloomy basement & a bat
colony — possibly vampiric — & anthrax
& crocodiles & voles & the entire plot of Blindness,
which he think was written by Julianne Moore.

If I am the sun, then he is deserts
and, suffocating in its own inferno.
Then he is my great-great-great Aunt Flora’s
thermostat, always set to 80. Then he is
the dust bowl & broccoli someone planted
next to concrete & newborn skin & all the times the moon
forgot it was August & a bloated lizard drowned in a resort pool.

            ​If we are both the sun, then we are imminent
​             drought. Dust devils masquerading as oases.