Sunspots

Evan Martinez

We meet in dreams because there’s nothing left of the outside world.

We’re learning about the sun, how its cooler spots are a portrait
of release. Not a teacher among us.

The school is a lighthouse with no doors,
alone in a windswept valley except some
lost humans playing harmonicas for pocket
change, trees lamenting lost seeds,
termites and wasps
invoking fluorescence.

I think how nice it must be for the sun
that people can see where it bruises.
How much you must love yourself to let others
press down on those soft spots. Capillary kingdoms,
pleasure and pain, touching enough to feel
but never enough to stop.

The earth spins and the people drone.

We’re still embracing each other,
clinging to what we believe about the waking world,
hoping our senses are failing.

Thinking about the self,
how it’s a dusty mirror.

Thinking about
what could go wrong.

I pull glass
from my throat and tell you,

everything, but that won’t stop us
from loving ourselves until daybreak.