I can breathe in pebbles 

and breathe out powder, 

fine dust ground from inner churning, 

excavating, grating ruminations—

I’ve done it all my life. 

Wake before sunrise with granite under my tongue, 

still under covers, 

I feel its course coat, 

how these years have shaped you, 

taste its metals, 

how your bitterness works with you, 

appreciate, in my morning meditation, 

how you began fluid, 

you metamorphic thing, 

and let your roundness, firmness

come to be

over years, underground. 

Still before sunrise, 

a stretch in my diamond bones, 

an inhale raising my chest,

I think how lucky I am to live with this gift—

this shattering diaphragm, a body like earthquakes, 

what I can build, what I can break, 

how I can sing with a mouth full of powder.