The almost thumbprint of my body in the ocean 
and why I leave the front door open at night.

I leave the door to the porch open at night
even though I'm afraid of the moths and how
their head banging reminds me of my own.
My own finger-tapped knees to search
out sleep somewhere between my joints
in a rhythm only the cicadas can follow.
Their metronomes are know to spiral from trees
like bottle rockets in archaic fury. 
It's the sound of stars falling out of their bunk-
beds and waking up in the sweaty fog of morning--
peel loose from the covers like warm string cheese.
Telling yourself again again again
I am Sirius, I am Vega, I am Urania, I am Rigel
and I take 10 billion years to wake up from
this saunter-- this unpleasant dream.

In the chance that I sleep walk tonight I hope
to wake up floating in the ocean 
instead of over my body where I 
watch myself sleep like a pork dumpling--
simmering in the cracked knuckles of the old 
cooling vents-- Turn me over and brown the edges
in old voices and new coffee tables. 
I will too become a pork dumpling 
again or maybe a spring
roll with see-through skin
and shrimps in my rib-cage
 but with the door open I can 
dip myself into the ink of night
and leave thumb prints with my sleep-feet.
Walk away from the place where
morning and night are simultaneously inevitable.

I made sketches of my chalk outline to fill in later.
I drew myself as an Apatosaurus on the street
corner between the Collegeville diner and 
Perkiomen trail-- a moth
on the great big library windows-- a crumpled
man with a baseball cap in pieces in
the supermarket parking lot where his
cart is still drifting-- I've 
only ever seen chalk outlines when people
get hit by cars-- but you can't die
in your sleep while your
body is stilling steam in pillow casing--
so I use blue chalk--and the fog washes it
away anyway.

If I did end up at the ocean I would hope that I
would be able to reach it this time--
and not returned to my bed room and wriggle
loose from the covers like the birth 
of a moth feeling how heavy their
own wings are and missing when they could
rest easy as a worm and not reach
high enough to bang their head on something--
I have walked so far and drawn myself in
so many shapes that my sleep feels like an alphabet--
or like a math equation using powers of
two as hair clips-- the other half 
of myself who has fat cells and the stretch
marks of a birch tree-- the outline of a body that
breathes heavy at the precipice of a staircase-- 
we hold each other's hands with a trail of crumbs
from confetti cupcakes I kept
from my fifteenth birthday party
back when I was only slightly terrified 
of icing.

With the porch door open I can walk the way 
back into the body of dough and the wet moth wings
wrapped around me-- washed salad leaves--
blood twin-- holding my chalk outline
in bed-- the headlights of stars
still falling. 

10 Billion years have passed.
Morning and night are still as
simultaneously inevitable
my night terrors and my
dream-body leaving my skin.