Or might be, they stipulated.
No one, not even the scientists, 

had a desire to dive deeper on this:
we’ve seen it and it’s horrible. 

150 feet of mouths kissing 
other mouths to form a body. 

It’s been growing for decades,
a suggestion of time that implies 

progeny, even grandchildren,
but it could be as young as twenty-four. 

Undoubtedly the worst age.
I barely made it. 

So I do feel a kinship.
I don’t feel afraid 

when I dip my toes into the ocean
and the ocean bites back. 

When I have a sharp thought,
one that digs like a nail in a palm, 

I imagine it connecting to all the thoughts
that came before it, mouth to mouth, 

to form a version of me.
The longest me in the world. 

The me who prayed
until they swept the pews, 

the me who loved my best friend
enough that I tried to die for her,

the me who begged him, in spring
by the woodshed, to beg me, 

the me who unfurled,
the me who talked around it 

until the psychiatrist said there’s nothing
wrong with her she’s just a liar, 

imagine if I could reach back and hold her,
as the scientist cries and says on TV 

you can see old perished colonies that are still
attached but no longer alive, 

though they are, they’re a hand skimming
the water as we swim, they’re geraniums, 

it’s like seeing an ancient forest,
and it seems simple-minded 

but past me didn’t know you could love two things
at once: soft and hard, jubilantly connected. 

I throw a cigarette into the water
and watch it sink to the very bottom. 

How proud you must be
to have grown to fool them. 

A creature whose existence seems disastrous, 
when you’re really just an endless chain 

of small and soft bodies,
clinging to each other.

Michelle Brown’s first full-length collection of poetry, Safe Words, was shortlisted for the 2019 ReLit Award. Her work has been recognized by the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, Contemporary Verse 2’s Young Buck Poetry Prize and the CBC Poetry Prize. Brown's second book, Swans, is forthcoming with Palimpsest Press this spring. She currently resides in Vancouver, BC.