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The marrow relay matches bone to bone.
A pressure at my wrist selects a throat
below the deck; the shock that should be mine
arrives there, pulse for pulse. A green permission
widens beneath the skin. Above, the hatch
unlatches. In the graft along my ribs
their atmosphere comes cold and tastes of tin.
I climb. The old lung follows, full of rain.
The moon’s soft magistrates lie sealed in glass.
Their orders thicken in the nutrient milk
and strike the bell implanted in my sternum.
They ring; I straighten. They have never had
a wrist. I fold mine underneath the cuff
and let its bead of brightness breed the brief
clean circle of admission. By the next watch
the circle thins. The graft begins to pinch.
Below, the sleepers draw their knees to warmth.
Each clearance buys another fold of lung,
a sliver from the membrane of their eggs.
The scar keeps hatching. Every breath I take
draws a new crack across the throat below.
They listen at the shell.
Clear me, bright plate. Read past the thumb’s blunt root,
the pulse’s muddy little afterbeat.
One in the hold has rubbed a thumb across
the lip of his cup, exactly where I rub
to find the chip before I drink. That small
unbidden care travels the copper home.
My hand is on his cup. His thirst puts out
its tongue behind my teeth. I raise the gain.
The cup fills with a room. The room contains
a table, and the table’s single leg
goes down through all the decks and drinks the shock.
I was not born there. Still, I know the board
that creaks beneath the man who brings the cups.
Before he puts them down I lift my hands.
A chair scrapes backward in my grafted chest.
The plate goes dark. I press until it greens.
Plate, read deeper. There is still a cough
caught in the hinges, still a thumbprint clouding
the polished zero. Scrape it. Somewhere down
the wire a man is teaching his shut fist
to open for a cup. I close the circuit.
The fist shuts. On the screen a white line lifts
its elbow, lifts its shoulder, stands entire,
and walks upstairs with nothing in its hands.
Within the plate the white line nurses smaller
lines, pale at first, then branched and thick with charge.
They drink tomorrow’s shocks. Down in the hold
the wounds arrive before I choose the bodies.
I choose. The old lung loosens in its cage.
The new one swells. Its cool, obedient lobes
unfold the room I sealed; a chair slides out.
There is a cup. I do not lift my hand.
Off watch, I keep the relay under cloth.
The green comes through. It stains the narrow bunk
with windows from the lower deck. Through one
a man lies listening to the ship’s slow pumps.
He cannot sleep. I know the catch between
the third stroke and the fourth; I wait with him
until it comes. Then all the windows turn
their open sides toward me. I get up.
The one who rubs the cup has learned to drink
with both hands underneath it. Nothing touches
the chip. He holds its broken side toward me.
I have not asked for water.
The relay trembles where his pulse comes near.
I lay my wrist against the testing plate.
Under the green, the small bones crowd together.
No space between them now for copper, cold,
or any name the ship has given me.
Above, the bell waits. Underneath my wrist
the knocking starts: not words, not yet, the blunt
insistent business of a fist at wood.
The marrow relay opens. In its hollow
I set the captive’s hand, adjust the gain,
and make the knock come out of him.
The hatch unlatches.
I keep my finger down.