Emma Bolden

Adaptive Solutions

Han Solo looks so comfortable in carbonite, like
he isn’t even screaming, just jaw-drop drooling, just 

stuck in the center of a nap so good he doesn’t wake up
even when his body outstretches its hands. I’m jealous, I can’t 

remember the last time I slept like that, so soundly
that sound loses its meaning and can’t wake me. During 

the last full eclipse, zookeepers studied their animals’ sounds,
whether they cried or slept, sang or silenced. Flamingoes 

circled their chicks, giraffes stampeded across ersatz
savannahs, and nearly every animal asked for a second 

breakfast in the seconds after the sun emerged. According
to the internet, Han Solo ended up in carbonite due to

a technicality: Harrison Ford wasn’t sure he wanted
to return for Return of the Jedi and his contract didn’t say 

he had to. Huge, if true, the internet says. And it’s true:
you never know when too much fun will be eclipsed 

by just too much, when good for you will become good
riddance. If you were a long-necked animal on Alderaan 

stampeding or circling your young, you may look up
at the blanked sky and realize: that’s no moon. What 

can you do? Make a second breakfast, slip into a sleep
so deep your death doesn’t dare make a sound.

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Emma Bolden is the author of a memoir, The Tiger and the Cage (Soft Skull), and the poetry collections, House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations and Maleficae. Her work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, The Seneca Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly and Shenandoah. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, she is an editor of Screen Door Review: Literary Voices of the Queer South.