lying on our backs
the cold concrete roof
manages a lid on city lights below.
still they bleed around the periphery,
a lamplight corona tickling the edges of blackness.
i start picking them out the way my mother does —
there’s cygnus, and the whole milky way;
the swan keeps orpheus from his lyre.
the eagle flies below, all thunder. I’m not interested in those though.
next to me SOPHIE plucks
a thread of light from a barsign
strings it up, wrapping twice around each star.
it gleams like a divine plan, like a hole in ozone the shape of a castanet.
The Oyster.
Cracked open just a little.
i dip my pinky over the ledge
and bring it up to smear neon-freon
over aquila,
herald of zeus
giving up his
ghost to me.
an arch, a doorway
i reinvite janus to the sky with within A point of no return.
the nights start getting longer,
and we reshape the cosmos together
each time the stars shine.
a bloom
a crowd a cloud
a cranium a chrysalis
a cull a wake
two hands intertwined
we stay still a whole year, drenching ourselves in starlight.
one day in the height of july the sun stops setting
and we never see eachother again.
of course i know why.
one august anniversary the night returns the moon is up there
in memoriam i let cosmic rays enflame my skin full every night from here on.
but i’m grinning, i couldn’t care. all the light is above us now.