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