cell safety

when you rub your eyes
deep with long fingernails
you feel the push and pull
of the rubbing tides
these slippery, wet pools
inside your skull, you rub
and rub like you are trying
to burst an egg yolk
 
which is a single cell, you heard,
just a bobbing, lonely mass
 
your eye cells multiply
iris on iris on iris
probing in on each other
when you rub the reflections run
into the next frame
like unfocused binoculars
looking out to sea, twin boats
on the water, twin whales
 
a gaze that multiplies the world
and unveils the mirror
 
now there are hundreds of whales
waiting their turn to be real
each believing it more than the next
and, sparkling, each drop of spray
holds a whale eye perfectly framed
perfectly forced into forever
sometimes it helps you
to forget these small infinities
 
return to the yolk and
rub her walled cell’s solitude