the evacuation plan

when i was in middle
school & trying to find
a way to evacuate
my own body i would 
walk around the block 
past the soy bean fields--
once in awhile
no cars would pass by & 
no one would make rustling 
in their backyards or
populate their porches with
knees & dirt-road feet
so i could pretend it was only
me here-- that everyone else
had found somewhere else to go--
i guess i just wanted to
find a way to tell you
that if everyone escapes
their bodies i want
you to leave me behind--
i want to be the last one &
i would start by just
walking down the back road again
& listening to the naked necks
of all the old trees whose 
skeletons rotted from the inside
out-- 
i feel myself growing hallow
without voices to fill 
the empty corridors up to my 
wrists-- i husk
myself-- scoop out
enough to be used as wind chime
for only me to hear--
i'd pretend the dotted
yellow lines in the middle of
the road were a balance beam &
i would hide all the places i
never thought i would fit into--
crawl inside the fridge & lay face
up on the second shelf next to 
a pint of blue berries
that my mother would have forgotten
about before the evacuation--
inside everything would be bright &
cold.
i'd wonder what it was
like for everyone 
to leave their bodies behind & 
where everyone had gone without me--
i would wish i'd kept you with me--
just you.
together we could repopulate the
earth with the sound of our
bones turning into wind chimes--
fall slowly like the trees who
gave up their bones-- we'd make
the kind of an unpredictable 
song spurred on by emptying 
yourself out the windows--
each sill filling up with voice--
the voice of everyone holding their
breath & waiting for me to give
up my freckles like a handful 
of sunflower seeds--
in the back yard i would listen
to the ghosts of the pumpkins we tried
to grow that one year--
they would make jokes about how
strange a relationship i have with 
other humans--
a limbo desire to be totally
& utterly alone while also engulfed
in a mouth full of every word ever spoken
into a poem--
i want to know if i'd still write poetry 
if it was only me to haunt this body--
just me here walking ghosts back
into the soy bean field--
i think i could keep writing even
if i forgot what all the words
we'd ever shared had meant-- written
in a language of empty femur &
vacant porch my poetry would
fall heavy out the windows
of the house & shatter in the driveway
like all the promises we 
made to sleep quickly & alone--
this is the evacuation plan--
stay with me-- we can unlearn what
all the words mean & i can teach
you how to depart from a body 
& how to trick the soy beans
into laughing like bells--
we'll bring dirt-road feet back
to the porch & wait
from everyone to return--
coming back to your body is like 
slipping down from the second shelf
in the fridge-- a carton of
blueberries in hand--