It turned up in the loam, a sharpening eye
among pyrite and rhizomes.
The clay brushed away like tired
dehydrated eyelashes,

opening a lid to the eggshell paper
leaves of breakfast light.

Round and bald under my sweeping thumb,
it was a hemisphere dropped
from the back of the Star Turtle

and I blew breezes like a shaky god
across its continents and schools
and panic rooms and lakeside reeds.
But it judged me. Me the peacemaker.

Me the disappearing act.
Me the warm liquid in a room.
Me the anything you want me to be.

It was a fuck you in its dimensions.
Unwilling to crumble or concede
the edge, it pressed only what it was
into my nerves like a concrete shelf.

No shapeshifting or meeting needs.
It bent a sweep of sky,
curled oxygen and dust
and colors around its shoulders
and sat in the hole
that it carved in the ozone.