cerebral hunger
 
adhesive glands suction to the deep
 
as her cells grow smaller the complexity of her organs heightens. she gives up musculature for cilia, strength for minutiae and mobility. not quite micro, not quite multi, not quite scaled, chitinous with rows of recurved spiny receptors. not quite language, she exudes chemicals that signal swell become mass the cycle to effloresce, cluster, stutter, cyst. she empties and expands, grows, is a growth, grows out of her a growth that grows her out, self-encased. she casts off. abandons and is abandoned. she eats her wraith before disintegrating. she disintegrates. eggs mature inside the fleshly excess into which she was absorbed. they cast off and cast off and cast off and consume their own vacant shells, growing capacious enough to develop a single, large ovary.
 
infancy bearing infancy
 
her brain a crown, an opening
 
her mind ringing her mouth, swallowing

Sarah Thompson is a Denver area high school English teacher with an MFA from University of Colorado, Boulder. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Oxidant Engine, Yemassee, Asymptote, and Duende.