In the nonhuman future, particles of plastic
pulverized by the North Pacific Garbage Gyre

work their way through scales of fish. Stars flare
through their life cycles without faces. How badly

I want them to have faces. My tombstone could be
a horse’s heart as it beats, quilt of blood, swift

to the furthest reaches, warming the nostrils,
the tender skin that fuses to the hooves.

If we became translucent, we would know
our chambers beat in different sizes, but the mystery

would persist: when my mother hunches, shaking
with sobs, whose shame is that? Whose shame inside

the unsayable, the pink jaws hinged open?
How shameful that others see. The word trauma shelters

a tired spirit. With each utterance, it must blossom
a new version of jazz hands. Each name holds a spirit

shaped by each saying, the way a pine tree turned floorboard
gradually takes our footsteps into itself.

A tree with a nest is time holding time.
There go the seconds making their Irish good-byes

or burning us with their flashy exits.