False poetics

Humans love using celestial bodies
to describe themselves, like
we are made of stars.

There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way
and 51 trillion microplastics in the ocean –
up to 77 percent in the air we breathe.
They are falling down the Sahara
as we speak.
If you ask my vital statistics
I’ll give them to you
in micrometers and particles.

When I see humans
I am crushed at how much
plastic makes walking stars.

This was first published in petrichor’s Ecopoetics issue on April 22, 2023.