Galaxies

MELANIE POWER

Ladies and gentlemen, please.

Thank you, thank you—yes, the magic tonight was real.

The trick, this time, is mine. No magician can saw me in half—without bunny or top hat or spell cast, I have simply vanished.

Call me the first woman to be without a body. Its corrupt government is gone, dissolved. Oh, silly body—it lacked claws,

it wasn’t fast, so I traded skeletal mass, my tits, my ass. I gave way to galaxy— to gas, dust, dark particle. I traded the heresy

of flesh for solar power. The thrill of haloed alchemy. I am careless as comets. I am as small, as large, as a fistful of stars. Hydrogen and helium—

oh! I am a happy nothing, like the black hole that is something. I am mindless as lunar light. Unafraid of night. Ladies and gentlemen,

please. I see you are amazed. I am the first person to shed the liability of my anatomy.

I am sky-sprawled—ruled only by the crux

of purple dawn/iridescent night. I am unenslaved by the liquid currency of bodies. I span milky miles, bleeding only darkness. Surely you are surprised

that no one can mishold me, to say nothing of groping. I’ve said goodbye to the most feckless of forms—the human hull.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have not been deceived. I am manned only by atoms. I am thin as a strand of dust, the naked eye cannot see me. No,

don’t outstretch your hand—it cannot feel me.