by Noah Powers

My lover is now a termite munching tiny tunnels
through the woodwork of my insides. She’s
paving walkable streets for termite travel
with a word on the phone from six thousand miles away,
she’s establishing communes made-up entirely
of her clones. They tend to my heart. They water it
daily. They build tiny termite projectors and fire light
onto the inside of my eyes in the shape of her face,
all the versions I’ve seen so far and teasers of all those
expressions yet to come. In termite school, they learn
how to gnaw only at the places that bear no load.
When they have to work at a sensitive part of my brain,
they are gentle. Their mandibles peck like quick kisses.
All of the time, she is doing beautiful, incredible termite things.
And yet, every day without fail, I’m on the hunt for a solution.
I visit wizards in their high towers, witches in their covens,
scientists of entomology and anthropology. My Duolingo is full
of languages old and dead and only found on clay tablets.
I’m looking for a way to make her a woman again, to feel
her body pressed against mine like words printed to page.
Meanwhile, she’s composing termite symphonies of our favorite songs
so I can hear them all the time, learning how to tweak the frequencies
to scale. All these efforts crafted from nothing but our love.
However small or selfish. However full of hope.

Noah Powers (they/he) is a bipedal mammal first discovered near the Ohio River in what we now know as Kentucky. Their poems can be found in HAD, Ghost City Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, and more. An MFA candidate at the University of Alabama, they currently serve as a poetry editor for JAKE and as the managing editor for Black Warrior Review.