Noctiluca
by Avery W. Lewis
After “Lamium” by Louise Glück
This is how you live when you cannot bear roots,
as we do: for ourselves, underfoot, among
grains of sand, marooned
as the ocean recedes.
The moon hardly touches us.
Sometimes it sees us through the night, reflects us
very far away. Then water rushes back, hides us,
blinding. I feel it breaking atop
the waves, fragmented
like a nail striking the wooden floor of a church.
Living beings don’t all devour light
the way you do. Some of us make our own:
flashes of ourselves, a shining bower
no one wants to bear, a wide
carpet of stars that float beneath their mirror.
But you know this already.
You, and the others who hope
you can share your luminescence, and in return,
get damned for giving it away.