Six

If I inhale just above the belly button

The ribcage is seen to emerge

Or rather, the abdomen retreats,

Falls inward

So much that I can get a decent

Solid grip on either side

With my four fingers curled beneath

And my thumb resting flat against my skin

In perpendicular,

Even from my bird’s-eye vantage

This is grotesque and irreverent

So I exhale

Flood my missing middle once again

With air and life and

All those things I know should count for

More than what they do

But they don’t

And still I’m on the floor

Every night

Up and down and up and down

And stop to breathe

And do it all again despite the pain

And stretch

And now I’m at the point

Where I can’t quite reach that

Zenith breath, that deepest inhalation,

First thing I do is close my eyes

Second is the mirror

Third is to open them again

And fourth is to look away,

But I tend to forget that last part and

Stare at my reflection instead,

It’s really just a photon reversal but

That’s precisely why it’s malevolent

From top to toe this crude

Defective

(self-awareness)

Flesh and bone

At once like all the rest

And nothing like them.