It

BY JULIE CHEN

Today I met it.

He touched me with his purple fingers as
drops of the universe rolled down his hair.
When he opened his mouth
chunks of moonlight tumbled out, entwined
with strings of glitter that
splashed onto the
sidewalk, slithering like
balls of mercury into the nearest gutter.
His eyes pulsed with
the rings of saturn, shadowed
by pools of eternal silence.
I smelled the crisp
edge of freshly cut grass as
he unfurled his coiled arm and pressed
a leathery pinkie to my forehead.
I saw a zebra running in his heart, behind
the throbbing veil of his
translucent chest.
He leaned in to press his
dewy marble lips to my ear and I felt
a string of ancient uttering thread the layers
of my consciousness.

The soles of my shoes wobbled and
the paved ground below me
dissolved into my skin.