Part One

We cheated when we painted the stars

and placed fireflies in the black ink

around our canvas-planet.

 

A half-sky hovered in limbo as we

copied and pasted the constellations.

 

Nothing we’ve made is complete;

no love, no star, no road through the hills.

 

We smile in mirrors with half our teeth

and laugh half-heartedly at the stars

we’ve forgotten are our own failures.

 

A moth beats against the screen door:

“imagine us beneath a whole sky.”

We put our paints away, kiss goodnight,

and hold hands in our sleep.

Waking to an Open Window

O! For the wide, white nights of the far North!

The warm breath of earth tinged with flowers

falling from the leaves that ousted them.

The ground white with Bradford’s pear blossoms,

reflecting nights that never truly dim to darkness.

 

And we lay on a carpet of clovers,

violet with the vibrancies of new life.

 

What is this world set on stone and soil,

fringed by cloud and outer oceans of vacuum?

If I were to feel the entire heartbeat

of the universe at large, would I

 

be less awed by that white heartbeat of yours,

beating violet in the clover beside me?