We fall through the eye of David Bowie the day I have you. You swirl out of me and pull me with your uncut umbilical cord into the dark mote of his eye. I can’t resist it or you. You coo and nuzzle my breasts, rooting for milk, your own eyes, unopened, and I wonder as we travel through a universe of viscera and stars, nurseries for new life. I kiss the top of your still damp head, smell the blood, the fluid, my pain, my fear, and you open your eyes and shine your blackstar gaze on me, swallowing me whole.
Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in Wigleaf, The Threepenny Review, Matchbook, Bluestem, Sunlight Press, Barrelhouse, Ghost Parachute, Cutleaf Journal, and Prairie Schooner, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin (2022) and Kahi and Lua (2022) and preorder Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.