Strange things happen when
you travel through wormholes.

Imagine waking from stasis alone,
floating in a petrified planet,
a 3-D photo where you can only
move inside the viscosity
of what should be material objects
like the old growth tree that crooks
and fluctuates within its boundary
of bark, rigid against vitrified air
you cannot penetrate. You could
burrow through burls of wood,
run tree rings, round and round
like a mouse on a wheel.

Close to the edge, you watch
captive birds painted in sky,
static clouds, and a sun always
about to burst through.

You run the inside walls of a cave
searching for a way out, a reason,
press your face up to the surface,
view the glass-like interior
of a vaulted cathedral, spires, static
ripples of a river that you glide down
until it diminishes to nothing.

You go deeper through earth, rock,
silicates, the shift of tectonic plates
until you reach a hollow filled
with liquefying lava, propelling
you along and up. A molten
dragon pitched from a volcano,
flung to the other side of reality
into air that you can move in.
Your companions a mile away,
outside the ship, wondering where
you are, and you with no memory
of landing in this place,
wondering if you imagined it all.