blubber 

i become a whale when you're gone.
light candles. call the gods. 
fill every room with my heart. 
my fluke out the back door,
slapping the sky. i break windows.
invite visitors to my lungs. tell them
to play good music & have a pink night.
try to lock the doors. invite my brother
who is also a whale. lay beached 
in the impending july. i pry my own blubber
from the bone to rewind the sun. 
we have so many fire waiting inside us.
what is a whale without the ocean?
it rains tonight & i consider running outside
without my legs. i try to sell the blubber.
try to make a salad with it. remember that
once we were devoured like love poems.
when you come home i will have
so much body for you. enough so that
we won't need to fix the windows.
me, the house. jonah inside still praying
as if his god can hear him. i feed him
spoonfuls of blubber. i explain,
"distance is not just a measure of air.
instead, it is language metric. will my 
voice touch yours? will it pool or will
it fall?" in all my whaleness i look up
at the stars. they come to join me as 
barnacles. it is a relief to swell. to be 
large enough to hold all this ache.