Naomi Bess Leimsider
A blinking light in the blackest dark there ever was is the way every tale begins
and ends: the complete absence of existence then the creation of everything.
There is no rest no peace, so consider this:
A ball of cells is only life if you want it to be.
Thrusting mouthless monster life; a howling hole of energy.
It floats above and below gravity. It understands nothing of time and millennia.
This perversion in the universe is awaiting your orders.
We are one second before midnight in the grand clock of things and all the choices
made on our behalf bring us to this very minute. The insistence of conception. Chromosomal confusion then a person-shaped speck. A little sea star straining
to push limbs out of new sockets. Primordial life always needs a sticky place to rest
its shapeless head. Everybody needs a home, especially a fresh tangle of metastasizing body parts. Cells split and divide split and divide.
Blood fills the four chambers of the heart; thoughts spill into three parts of the mind; oxygen for two soft, spongy lungs; taste buds line one muscular tongue.
Born whole human half human a near miss missed or missing but not born
or born still. The agony of pulling dirt from the earth. The phantom pain of not
knowing the future. Time spent. Bodies loved. All the bones buried in the ground.
You better take it all in before the extinction. There is no greater love than the love
of worship, so get on your knees.
If you let them, they will take parts of you. You might even ask for it.
You might even want it. You won’t know what you’ve given away.
You denied yourself many possible futures. You never listen and you never learn.
You do not know how to love, how to worship, so what will you do.
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Naomi Bess Leimsider has published poems and short stories in Newtown Literary, Otis Nebula, Quarterly West, The Adirondack Review, Summerset Review, Blood Lotus Journal, Pindeldyboz, 13 Warriors, Slow Trains, Zone 3, Drunkenboat, and The Brooklyn Review.