NIGHT VISION

The Earth turned more slowly now. Nights were days long and days were overcast with coal. So much darkness made our eyes bulge like plums, made them burn like fireballs. We became very swift. We became very deft hunters. We could see very deeply into each other, all the way to the marrow. When one of us stood against the moon, the others could watch her blood rush through her like a river. We could see the air bubbles where the stomach and heart should have been. And if we didn’t blink we could watch them shrink. And if we didn’t breathe we could feel our own cells tightening into pebbles. And if we wanted, we could scoop handfuls of ourselves into the well we stood at the bottom of and thereby build ourselves a stairway out. And once out would face the sky with our meteorite eyes. Would see all the way to the end of it for the first time.