Palindromes

by Jennifer Rollings

This is a box in a shoe.
Foot jutting from heel,
bones streamlining skin.

Something that shouldn’t be and is not.

Your mine,
and my yours.

A commodity for sale,
forward and reverse,
inverted and extrapolated
until it is one continuous product
under God.
Here is a glove in a hand,
iron pushing against tendons.
Another model, made in velvet,
will bulge beneath the veins
with less intrusive authority.

You say I need them
to suppress dissent,
smooth as a neuroenhancer
taking hold on a morning commute.
This is the rough in a diamond,
pretty as sludge over ice.

Here, soon, will be my atmosphere
swallowed up by your planet.

There is no word for ‘our’ in this new language.
My protests don’t leave my mouth,
because I’ve left no room for you to lay claim in it.

It will come down to one thing, this I know,
impossible to own or separate:

My earth is not your earth is not mine.