dreams where i am stretched into the sky

When I watch the world, I try to feel it spinning beneath me. I try to be the most alert I've ever been, my fingers and toes splayed, eyes wide and squinting, attempting to see everything I want to focus on. My back is straight and fragile so the wind can nudge it, the way it blows around me. I stop breathing even. I slow my pulse and listen for the frequency of the earth. I listen to the subtle cracking of the soil beneath the pacing feet. I can smell the lava scalding the core and I see it sparking in the fault lines and worry lines of the world. I touch the smoke of the clouds and rake my fingers through them, streaking the atmosphere in weightless condensation. I feel the earth; I know it is alive. But I think it may have stopped spinning, just to feel a different pulse traveling along its skin. And maybe as I try to feel its rotation, it is relishing my heartbeat and my absence of vertigo.