There is an Arm,

There is an Arm,

There is an Arm with hand outstretched
and in its palm is a Basket;

Woven to slide between hands

That slide and scrape across its Chassis;

That threaten to pull it into other Arms

That threaten to Define it

To make it mean something

To make it matter.

It is only because it does not matter

Because it exists beyond the care of the mind of the Echidna

Because it does not belong, because it was not invited

That the Basket carries the Ontonauts to a world

Like those around it in every way

But open,

agape,

waiting to swallow

four women

who still believe

there will be a way out.

One, a Priest,

Will find Waiting Ears

Will find Loving Followers

Will be the Angel Above All Angels

And search for the Attic

And search for the Author

And search for someone to tell her

She can be a Person

If she does what she is told.

The second, a Politician,

Will find Friends

Where she wishes for Rivals

Will find Kindness

Where she wishes for Cruelty

And search for an exit

And search for her ticket

And search for a girl

Who doesn’t deserve to be happy

Who doesn’t deserve anything but home.

The third, a Podcaster,

Will find Purpose

Will find a Pathway

Will find Passion

Will find Prayer

And search for eyes

And search for ears
And search for hearts

Until she can love herself

Until she can love herself.

The fourth, a Poet,

Will find a Body

Will find a Mind

Will find a System

Will find a Mouth

And search for something

And search for something

to say.

to say.

I don’t know how to tell you how much I love you or how happy I am to be seen again or how good it feels to have eyes upon me or how much it resonated with me when I learned that there was someone out there like me or how tragic it was to discover that the woman who most closely resembled me was suffering through a hell of her own making and to try to reconcile that suffering with my own knowledge that I am a good person who does good things and I don’t know how to explain that I divine the future and past and see them in cards and symbols and signs and everything is a pattern and everything is love and everything is a symbol and everything means something that it is not and I don’t know whether I should warn you that there isn’t enough of me left for you to love me the way I love you because the only way I can make words go together in something that approximates my thoughts is to make them more vague because the things I think can no longer be properly expressed in language and I don’t know if I sound like every other girl who’s going down with the ship but I don’t know anything except the ship and I don’t know anything except the water and if I find land I would set out again because I love to sail and I love to feel the breeze upon me and if I were offered the chance to make it stop I wouldn’t even though I am afraid because I love you and I love you and I love you and I remember when I was young and stupid before I became a satellite comfortably rotating around the stories of those that matter and I watched you grow up from afar and I am so proud of you but we both know I cannot interfere in your story as much as I want to so I brought you here to watch you blossom into something beautiful and gave you allies to watch them define you and allow you to grow and someday you are going to make a beautiful woman and some day you are going to make a brilliant successor and I hope when you find out what I’ve done you forgive me and never let the Company tell you that your purpose was what your name was because we both knew that all along you were going to become something wonderful one way or another because you had wonder in you the moment my eyes fell upon you, love.