now, the only ethical source of consumption in america is the dream. i awake with oil clotting menstruation-like between my toes, sealing me to the bed already wet with bloody goose feathers. jarred bits of permafrost sit thawing on my windowsill. the arctic bacteria floats to the top like upside-down maggot bodies. i tip-toe about the room. here, in america, my frostbitten lips are always full of wildfire. here, in the room, my hemline is always catching to fire and rats. in your corner chair, you sit rocking coughing so close a coo away from choking. you remind me not to resuscitate you by pointing outside. my vision blurs at the water’s blackened edge. today, we size-up the rising atlantic. you ask if you might fit it whole in your belly: would you implode or shatter? we spend the afternoon dancing on the tops of fallen architecture. your mind shivers: a cliffside sliding into the sea. your words a slippage pooling in a bath of petroleum. you and i, we’re always arriving too late to prophecy. i’ve found myself seizing a flooded city for no god, no mad king waits for me here. water leaks wantonly through queen-sized holes, empties in emptied reservoirs. i hold your hair back as your body fails vomiting. still we remove our timepieces, holding them as mirrors to the sky. rainbows ricochet in the flairs of ozone: falling snowlike, crystallizing our eyes.