I’m the type to go unseen in the world. I’m the milk of women.
—Ellen Welcker

Once while boarding a train
Marilyn Monroe turned to a friend and said
Do you want to see me turn it on?

She didn’t change clothes,
but suddenly autograph-seekers swarmed
over her blue light.

Sometimes it’s like that—deciding to be wanted.
Wanting to be watched.
A secret sonar sent to attract the killers.

This year I experimented with the dark
and retreated into the line of my own making
and waited like a sand striker,

who feeds only when a shadow lingers
over their mouth.
This makes the year sound bleak.

And so it was.
But beneath the depths of cubic pressure
strange features emerge—

an angler fish who lights their own way,
an octopus who gathers shells to their body
and then transforms into the beautiful dead.

Image: Photo by Markus Spiske, via Raw Pixel