outside my body is an ecosystem of smiles: A Poem by C. heyne

Herd of sheep in field by Martin Bisof
Photo by Martin Bisof on Unsplash

outside my body is an ecosystem of smiles

but please don’t think my body is forgotten. or that the room is gone. or that we can talk about the room without discussion of my body or of dispersion and decay or without mention of where we go from here. we go where the animals have gone and continue to go. the warm wet soil welcomes our hoofless appendages. learn we travel, not by instinct, by observation and trust of our star-sought senses. don’t think i’m without my questioning. if we all left early, who would shear the sheep? who would be left to smile back? i am full of smiles. i write it to be true. i am happy and the sheep clack their cloven hooves. i blackout one night and call my mother the next. every sunday. my parents are my church. the sweetest smiling bees. i watch a body in my mirror every morning look more and more like my own. i say i might shave my beard. might wax the whole body and roam hairless in the spring. but i look forward to the spring. the body roams remembered in it. the solstice. the hereafter.

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