Asteroseismology

Like all deaths I am bottomless,

a coma. But there is a photon,

there is inside my core

an electric cloud, a brain

decaying like a city after black rains

and inside it a remnant:

dream I can barely see

the shape of—

while a chemical snow drifts

downwind onto the red muscle

of the water, deposits

silvered petals but never spring

and abandoned after

and for long, our feral thirst

finds no end, only a bending

to drink again—

even as wind strips the meat

from the deer’s skeleton,

as we are just spines,

as the eye eats itself into cataract,

a white ring around the pupil:

the floating cloud

of your face I can no longer

make out, that vaporizes

before I can reach it

though through the spectroscope,

deep inside the cavity,

like a handful of melted uranium

the glow remains.