skin sleeping

i sleep with my wings on in case
the house catches fire & i have to leave
with the geese. adults always ask,
"if there's a fire, what would you bring
with you?" i answer, "my backpack"
& they slap a "wrong" buzzer & say,
"you are supposed to leave with nothing."
when i ran from the city, when the skeletons came,
i put all my life in my volvo & drove it into 
the hudson. underneath the water 
i learned to grow gills. i mermaided for years.
left voicemails at my ex's house.
we had broken up too soon & i missed her
more than i had the lungs for.
fish are great comedians. i laughs myself
full of dirty water. i met an eel who promised
he could take me to a place no one else
had ever gone. it was nothing special.
it was just a pile of rocks but it meant something
to him. i think a lot about the decision to
march on land. would it have been better
to remain aquatic. i think that one day
we will get to meet aliens. they will
think it's weird that we sleep. i used to sleep
completely nude as a kid. i called it "skin sleeping"
in my head, not to anyone else. then, once,
my grandmother woke me up. she said,
"what are you doing without clothes on?
what if there is a fire? than you would be 
indecent." i died a little. put on my jeans & t-shirt.
slept with my eyes open, hoping she would
not return to my room. she did not. 
i thought of fire though. flames licking
my bare heels. flesh turned into printer paper.
i made wings the very next morning.
my first ones were from the lids of lowfat yogurts.
i hid them. practiced flying in secret.
no one has ever caught me doing it but if 
they did i would treat them like the eel treated me.
i would show them the collar where the sunrise
makes the world orange cream velvet. 
i might beg them to stay with me. i might say,
"we can make this work. we can make this work."
the message on their voicemail. rusty car
crawling onto land from the primordial water.