Sister, listen.
Zeus swallowed his first wife.

So why should it surprise me when,
after driving in silence for hours,

my husband knocks me back
in one quick gulp?

Here I sit, captive in the belly,
composing songs on the lining of his stomach.

I clang them on his xylophone of ribs.
(I am furious with his ribs.)

He inside his husk of solitude
(I am angry with this husk) is happy.

I have only my unruly brood of thoughts
for company, and they have found a stick

with which they poke his shriveled liver
like tending a sick flame.

From deep within, I hear a waterfall,
echo of myself, the way it empties

without fear of emptiness.
Perhaps he fears a flood.

I would hardly have capsized the car.
I would have let him keep his thunderbolt.

Instead, he disgorges me at the rest stop 300 miles north
where I totter in the sunlight, parched,
and wonder where we’ve been.