Without Metabolic Interchange

by Annie Blake

NASA

it is like being unhooked in outer space. there is no metabolic interchange. the silence is different. it is inflatable

and it doesn’t forgive my transgression. i know I have slipped. the hinge is flapping. the oxygen and radio have been switched off.

i can hear the muffling outside my room and i want to make sure that it stays persistent. the voices are shadows

which cannot keep percolating. part of me knows this—hope has become extraneous. i want the voices outside the door to stay thick.

i would rather hear them argue and be their child than admit the air in the tank has run out.

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Annie Blake is an Australian writer who has work published or forthcoming in Anomaly Literary Review, North of Oxford, Blue Heron Review, Mascara Literary Review, Red Savina Review, Antipodes, Uneven Floor, The Voices Project, Into the Void, Southerly, Hello Horror, Verity La, GFT Press, About Place Journal, Gravel, Australian Poetry Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and more. Her poem “These Grey Streets” was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Vine Leaves Literary Journal. She holds a Bachelor of Teaching, a Graduate Diploma in Education and is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne and Existentialist Society (Melbourne).