Before the falling of all 

iron and iridium carbonacious 

crust, and frozen dust, before the meteor

unremembered the world

and the world’s world, the ocean

and all the ocean’s followers, there 

was before. Of teeth and mouths 

and skin as nuanced as the sky’s sky, 

the ocean lapping all, lapping none. The ocean, 

the sky, the hierarchy

of mouths. Then the fall, the iron, the metal 

core. The moon gave up all 

pretense. The sun gave up everything. The wind, 

purple and enlarged with grief, carried 

the meteor’s rhymes to the poles and returned 

in rounds to re-teach it. The earth did not 

know how to respond 

until it did. All life there ever was

was once frozen dust careening 

into the worst of us; a meteor falling 

into the earth which is us falling into our own 

muck which is already falling 

into its own hole ever opening, ever falling.  

You can’t feel it but it’s true. That noise? 

The body falls into itself, on a planet spinning 

so fast life feels fixed; falling 

into a mouth devouring a mouth 

devouring a mouth.

---

Cassandra Whitaker is a trans writer from the rural south. Their work has been published in Little Patuxent Review,Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Daily Drunk, &Anti-Heroin Chic, among other places.