i shovel a mouth
full of pearls, gritty and shiny
until my teeth crack
and my tongue flattens
out of over my jaw and the edges
push against the base and i would
choke with laughter if it wasn’t for my ribs
heaving and collapsing, an armadillo
of bones, and instead
i stretch backwards until i can see
behind me and all the world
suddenly makes trees weeping their limbs
into the mud and fingers sprout out like grass
writhing without palms and
she would have been born without a palm
and i cough out the pearls bloody and sticky
and the saliva drapes over my eyes
but nothing ever blurs, not even the fingernails, not even
the swirls of a thousand fingertips