Noise

When the doctor walked into the room, she let in a crisp draft
that crawled up my bare legs and traveled up my gown until it pooled
into the bottom of my belly, chills climbing up each rung of my spine.
“What brings you here,” she asks, and I raise my fist to my chest,
once, twice, “Doctor, I can’t get this feeling out of my chest.”
This pounding within me that echoes so loudly, that vibrates into
my fingertips, rattling each nail, and I can hold nothing in my hands
but the breaths that escape me. “Doctor, what can I do?”
if I can’t sleep through the nights because of the deafening silhouette
you’ve left impressed into the bed I continue sleeping in every night,
if I can’t swallow this sourness that lingers on my tongue because I can
only remember the sweet taste of your lips, once mine and now a memory.
The doctor observes me for a minute, two, and it seems too long before
she speaks again. Perhaps you’re forgetting what’s already here,
and she flattens her palm against the center of my chest, releasing
from within me a song so tragic I begin to weep, the weight that sat on me
as heavy as the heavens and skies Atlas carried. We sit together, and she
reminds me that a galaxy lives within me, and each breath I release,
each tear that falls, spills stars into the sublimity around us.
There are so many places my stars have yet to reach.