lately, i can’t tell if i’m talking to god
or to myself. if there’s really any functional difference.
the fish came along & swallowed me
down its heaving, fleshy gullet—a word
that sounds like it should be loaded into the metal
throat of a gun—to the briny cathedral of the stomach
where i begged & begged on my knees for it to end,
one way or another. it did not. sometimes
what imprisons you is what keeps you alive.
on the first night, a nurse walked past my door
& asked with a curiosity so genuine it almost shocked
me out of my hysterics, why are you crying?
i did not see the sun that week. huddled in the belly
of the whale, lodged between mucus & muscle,
i imagine jonah forgot what it was like to look up, to lift
his head & exhale into the space between himself
& everything else. like him, i was brought here
because i refused a divine command. live, the rotting
remnants of the sea whispered around me.
live, the buttresses of ribs cried out.
live, the door cracked open in the dead of night sang.
live. the prayer sheet i balled up & threw away.
live. the circle of chairs.
at the beginning, god told jonah, up!
& after the running, all the lungfuls of seawater—
up he went, vomited back into the light.