Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker shares that her occasional method for dealing with mortality is to eat the stars. This provides temporary alleviation from death anxiety. The second stanza expands on the first as the speaker recounts lying on her back at night and sucking all the stars to satisfy her thirst. The stars have a sharp peppery and spicy taste.

The speaker describes another solution for addressing her fear of death in the third stanza. She stirs herself into a still-young universe and compares its warmth to blood. In the fourth stanza, she states that space is simply space, not outer space. There, the precursors to stars shine a light that drifts like a bright mist. The speaker lists "all of us" and "everything" alongside protostars and all that is "there / but unconstrained by form" (15-16). For the speaker, lying down on...