Mammalian

Gasping,
the weight of all worldy air
light enough to float
gathered together atop my chest,
paralyzing me in between states of consciousness.

Now,
I am not worried about dying. I am not suffocating
from this.
I can feel the sun sucking out all the moisture
I have accumulated solar radiation,
the evaporation sometimes itches,
crackling my skin.

I can hear the white waves crashing below me,
at my feet,
the atmosphere levitates between solid and vapor.

I can feel the displacement of the ground under my body
wedged between a million grains and cannot move
under this compression.

This thick skin has held too much inside.
Over time,
the walls between this and that breakdown-
ocean, air, lung and rib, my marrow margins.
Any body,
I dare
touch me, a moment before the explosion
feel how forms are all temporary.

*
It was just this thought
of a suicidal great whale. My morning, anxiousness.
Beached him or herself.
What is left of this shell?
The gastric juices digesting itself,
as if there was one final thing to
finish
breaking down.

Gravity does not let us change our mind
either,
I was about to explode
myself.

Image By Avenue (Own work), stranded Grey's beaked whale in New Zealand [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.