JESSICA LEE MCMILLAN

Outpatient

If only I could be both
Nina Simone's yellow dress 
and a phosphorescent bloom 
—a grain & the hug of universe.
I try to keep rooted.
Don't need to leave footprints on the moon 
to feel a celestial body.
Yet in my rush, I lose the Earth
in peripheral view.
I am her outpatient—a city rat 
with a heart of grass 
in a thicket of cranes 
& some scorched municipal trees.
I'm working on how to be 
world-weary & eat a peach. 
I am never enough phyto 
& too much mercury. 
Take pills to replace/remove 
what's inside me.
I steal sleep under LED streetlight
stirring up the robins, 
now insomniacs.
In this late hour, I dream 
back to forest time 
before the rise 
of the next orange sun.
IRL, I am a frontline worker,
which is like a tree. 
I feel part of it all
when I imagine myself 
as the rings
growing around the axe.