I can breathe in pebbles 
and breathe out powder, 
dust ground from my 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 like fluid, 
you metamorphic thing, 
and let your fullness
come to be
over years, behind cartoon eyes. 

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.