I am a dog and I will have my litter.

While walking the curved bone

between sleeping and waking

I see stars emitting inky darkness

on a field of shattering white.

They pulse like pinprick black holes,

and the hot pain rakes over me.

I am a sky and I will have my storm.

Perched Cardinals burn the paper of this dream,

creating holes to let me see through to the other one.

And he is there. He is always there.

I walk through the smoldering doorways,

knowing that I am the door.

Crystalline flakes of blood are falling there—

or are they black like the sun? 

I am a reproduction and I will reproduce.

I swaddle my fear and lay it on the bed—I watch it dream. 

Stars look in through the windows,

dark and terrifying.

Do my words feed them or scare them away?

I sew myself into a coffin made of receipts: 

what I've spent and what I owe,

and I throw myself 10,000 feet under the sea.

Catfish sees this and takes me into his gentle mouth,

we surface among a league of toy boats,

and I pull myself up and sail home.

I am in the land beyond children now, 

the starless valley—

I cut them out with the moon's sharp fingernail,

put them away with Nana's old china.

Don't blame the baby for making me sick,

I was like this before it made its nest,

before it stung me.

And now I am finally lightweight;

my voice hooked into the flesh of Heaven.

As Catfish pulled me from the black pressure,

I now climb the invisible stairs toward 

sheets of Northern Light set out to dry,

toward lightning that's still white.

And I am up there, in the manless place,

and I can see everything.

It is ugly and eternally profound.

The color is carnivorous and sincere.

Everyone here speaks Spanish, even God, 

and my heart remains a streetlamp.

This is no small death, dear one,

I am shattered against the rocks.

Because even here I am searching.

Even here, I am fertile.

----------------------------------------

Alorah Welti (she/her) is a feminist, synesthete, poet, and prize-winning artist. Her work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Hyacinth Review, Rejection Letters, Lit. 202, and elsewhere. She is a reader for The Selkie. She just moved back to Mankato, Minnesota in Dakota homeland after 20 years away. You can find her on X at @alorahsky