Some fish make homes inside the mouths

of larger fish. As humans, we pretend to know

existence at your microscopic scale.

Many tiny species wait for names

the way I wait in this exam room for our doctor.

Nomen nudum, a technician wands a wave of sound

across your mother’s stomach

and out of blackness your heart flashes.

It pulses like a squid that siphons

sustenance from empty waters.

It glows like rare, abyssal fish

which know no light but their own.

Somehow, our kind survives this crushing pressure.

Strange thing, this glimpse makes me

the world’s expert on your ways. They ask

that I describe you. They want to know your name.

As if I know. As if, when the wand lifts away,

the screen does not blank, your pulse

does not stop whooshing in our ears, and I

do not see my scared face reflected in the darkness

where you were. As if I understood

the new thing that I saw.