I say, you and the whole world. Scientists discover
ice caps’ melting from the mountaintops
makes our planet rotate faster than ever through space.
Earth, she is sleek as a gymnast. I, too,
am reeling in darkness, my life all of a sudden
half wasted away. On Mondays, my friend and I
meet at the gym to roll our middle-aged bodies
until we’re dizzy. Oh, to be children again,
acclimated to the merry-go-round.
Oh, to have not yet suffered
the damage done by all these years
sitting at my desk in the increasingly sweltering sun.
The news is worse by the day. And now,
scientists have discovered holes in the ocean floor
punched in a perfect line, perhaps erupted from below
by gas escaping. Perhaps set there by aliens. Perhaps,
and this is my favorite theory, by starfish doing cartwheels.
Some days, I want to sink my head in a hole
in the bottom of the ocean, pull the seabed
over my body and sleep in the darkest dark.
Scientists have found a way to revive the brain
cells of pigs after their deaths, which the scientists
also caused under carefully anesthetized conditions.
On Mondays, we cartwheel across the gym floor
blue as an ocean. And if we are daring enough,
turn flips off the trampoline. For a moment in motion,
the world is a blur, like returning to consciousness
from a deep sleep. And then we spot the blue
foam pit below with perfect shimmering clarity,
the way those pigs must have looked upon
those scientists in their white jackets, hovering
like whatever winged messengers of God
pigs believe in, before being
swallowed by darkness whole.
—Cynthia Marie Hoffman
Cynthia Marie Hoffman (Website) is the author of Exploding Head, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, all from Persea Books. Essays in TIME, The Sun, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Poems in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Cynthia lives in Madison, WI.