Gas

There is a gas building up inside of me.

I know this because my fingers are wider, thicker than they were yesterday. They aren’t puffy like I had too much sodium. More like a balloon thats begun to hold too much helium.

More than it was designed to.

I don’t know what it is made of or if it is lethal but it is growing. Continuing to form from inside of me.

If something isn’t done i think my skin will split. Right down my spine.

My ear drums are being forced away from my skull as if I’m flying, the plane has finally reached altitude, and they are just about to pop. But they can’t.

Like tiny champagne corks that wont let the pressure out.

Oysters

Oyster cluster
Cling to one another
Aligned to grow
Love like water will flow

Key

It was impossible to understand
How fond my mom is of me

Now I can

To your heart
He is the key

Quails

Quails keep breaking their necks on my sliding glass door
Wings spread
Head turned flush with the floor
In front of me
Mine wouldn’t snap so gracefully

Nails

Not knowing mine would look the same in twenty years, I asked why her fingernails had so many ridges. Like osteoderms shingled down a crocodiles spine. Overlapping at uncomfortably narrow junctions.