If only I’d been encouraged, as a child, to cultivate the ability to breathe like a wren, that shallow, barely discernible rise of its breast. Someone says transmutation. Or maybe meet me at the station. Imagine each new footfall on the wooden platform, the wait for a lover who never shows, hoarse cries of steam engines. The moon is just another handsome face in the dark. How the stars endure its relentless betrayal. How the light loses itself in the sea’s wilderness. If only I could write letters to my other selves, the ones living their lives alongside mine. The ones whose presence, on cloudy days, I sense in the hastening of air against my cheek.

Note: “Ascension” previously appeared in The Normal School, “Exodus” in Poets and Artists, and “Subversion” in The Laurel Review.