Every morning my partner eats a palmful of medication
one hour before breakfast, then gazes into her empty coffee cup,
forecasting, her body tricked into believing her thyroid exists,
the emptiness of her belly aiding absorption.

Potted cat grass grows on our apartment windowsill
overlooking the dead lunar landscape of December in Maine.

The cat grass photosynthesizes winter sunlight, weak and watery,
into energy and our two pet rabbits nibble the cat grass and absorb the energy
and chase each other in circles before collapsing like stars.

Next to the cat grass on the windowsill, I keep a transparent
pill organizer, a cell for each day of the week, and every morning
I pinch a pill between my thumb and finger and swallow another host of the sun.

When I look out the window to the sky, I wonder how something as warming as the sun
could have plans to kill the universe, to die and explode in a future murder-suicide.

At least the moon looks like a rock ready to crush the earth from a great height.
I tell this to my partner, who says that it’s too early, that she is cold,
that her empty belly is still aiding absorption. I gesture to the column of light
falling through the window, and my hand slices clean through the air, clean through the sun.

Energy processing is a characteristic of life.