Unsummoned

Unsummoned

Fires singe your lashes and arm hair.
The pigment beneath your scalp flees.
Names bubble from you, unsummoned.

Your spine buckles, a tendon snaps.
Seismic disturbances lurk in this mud,
in our anatomy. Sure, we own the land

we live on, the body that we pilot out
into the potholed terrain of time.
Cells halve and double. Blades slice skin,

blood surging out like a choir, like oil.
Almost none of experience needs
your consent. Wrestle that to the floor

and clutch it against your chest, and
remember our planet, how no one asked
it if the moon could latch on.