Untwisting

I imagine untwisting the spiraled ladder
of your DNA, unwinding the double helix
and ripping out the rungs, leaving two straight lines,
parallel and predictable as train track rails

So that I can decode your encryption:
strands of insistent capital letters that spell out
infinite gibberish
repeated consonants slammed together like some
Russian-German-Arabic pidgin.

I’ll pluck the offending portions,
the genes that make your world clammy
I’ll breathe utterances that sound like
slow bossa nova and warm lake water

And lay the sounds out flat in neat italicized
blocks; taking my time with transcription;
I’ll string them together with cool air
blown through my lips in a silent whistle;

I’ll pinch the ends and hold the
fresh phrases up, like a chain of
paper people holding hands

I’ll let you translate, add flourishes and carve edges;
adapt them to your vernacular so they feel natural
and fit your mouth, like the
colored plastic shapes you used to push through
corresponding holes in that yellow flimsy cube

And when I’m finished I’ll pull taught the steel with which
I have tampered. I will put back the rungs,
inserting the dowels and pegs that connect the left and right -

And I’ll braid the rails once more
“X” after three dimensional “X”
turning and turning
and I’ll restore the malleable corkscrew to its
rightful place within you.

Replicate the replacements that speak to you.
Take them to heart,
so when you are scribbling a note
or hastily typing an essay,
the times when your attention slips, when
the word expected next in the sentence is “conclusion”
but what ends up on the page is
“petrichor” - the smell of earth after rain,
You’ll think twice before erasing it.