Unauthorized Rising

---

    If on the 29th day you are born it is October and if what your mother remembers about your breaching is that your father complained about the fishy smell of the water left behind, then you may never know when it was after the second push that you slid into the hands of Doktora Cruel. Still dark out, after all, is not an exact enough minute or hour to conjure your birth chart in the basin of the Ozarks. But ululate not about the smeared, indecipherable script on your birth certificate, the mayhem of their marriage, your twelve galactic houses shuttered up. Flex your orbs and tell me of your suspension in the aircraft. Time Traveler, Time Traveler, tell me of the cruising altitude, of sitting open-eyed and buckled while the day rewound. Forget you never saw your transiting family or Pearl again. Forget the whoosh of the sliding doors. Forget the cover that deplaned you in the secret of September, that bore you to this merciless cluster. Remember your alignment of paper. Remember the cubicle of solitude from where you wrote your stars. Shape-shifter, Shape-shifter — look now to me here. Draw your avatars right over.