He stood on the grassland of Ledi Geraru.

The sky was a vast expanse of melancholic gray
and the crimson blue light made the night imminent.

Each twilight his feet felt the kiss of the dewy shrub
as he waited for the first star to come out
that in a hushed sweep descended as peace.

He would raise his finger to the sky
and upon the river of his eyes
the star broke into fragments of tears.

He was slowly dying
but a greater him was to tread the grassland.

His eyes weren't found.

Only his jaws still stuck with the beauty
were dug up from the stardust.

As the clouds approach, the night loses not its sound, nor its shallow breath. Instead it sits in waiting for the moon to reappear. The whistling wind whispers to me. Its secrets send goosebumps down my whole body. I let myself fall backwards freely. I hit the grassy ground with a solid thud. For a brief moment I throw my breath into the wind. Quickly my lungs catch it and fill me back up with cold November air. I am freezing. Icy gusts playfully pinch my bare arms and legs. In the frigid New Hampshire winter, I wear an ironic t-shirt and rolled khaki shorts that barely covers half of my body. My lips press against the bottle and I imagine it was you. The cheap *** no longer tastes, for it has numbed my tongue. That is why it no longer hurts to say your name. Again and again I give your name up to ****** in the hopes that he will carry my voice to you. The clouds pass and leave this night behind, revealing to me the stars. For millennia the stars have held the same spot in the night sky, spending eternity surrounded by the same few stars. I imagine spending an eternity surrounded by you. The wind has stolen the moisture from my mouth, so I wet my cheeks with another swig and one more for good measure. I can feel the brown liquor warm my insides the same way you did. The stars are twinkling now, like the blinking lights downtown. My thoughts are diluted by my neighbors cheap liquor and my head is spinning. The glistening cosmos remind me of the flashing monitors. The sirens in the background sound like the beeping machines. The cold glass bottle feels just like your hand did in mine. The feeling in my gut is just as sharp. My chest still feels like a locked door, unable to open or close. I polish off the bottle with one long gulping sip and hold it firmly to my chest like I used to hold you. I let my body go limp just like yours did, the image of which still engraved so deep in my mind like your name in that stone. I shut my eyes and I pray through flowing tears that the freezing night will reunite us for eternity, just like the stars.

Raised Catholic, she
proposed that ******* count
as valid worship

on Sunday mornings.
See, God is present then— she
screams His name enough.

There was a phrase uttered by the voice on the other end of the phone that bee lined down my spine and made me gravity’s *****.

“He’s coming home on Monday.”

Then the clock began to tick, and its second hand stopped at the number twenty — the exact number of seconds it took me to realize what I had just been told. It’s the number of times I made him promise that he’d get himself on a plane back to the states after his course ended. It’s the number of feet between the shoreline and where tourists found his body, face down, on the beach. Twenty — the number of days he’s been dead.

It feels a lot longer than that, but grief makes you lose nearly all sense of time, among other things. All of those moments I spent with him before he left to get on that plane just seem like a series of fleeting flashes that I cannot tame. My apartment, his car, his bedroom, my bedroom, my hands, his hands, hot breath, his scent, my scent, touches that begged, pieces that fit, blood humming fast and warm, all made for several nights spent unexpectedly well. We were always great friends but undeniably better lovers. It was one aspect of our relationship we both tried, but failed miserably, to ignore. I wrestled with the fact that could remember it all in such clear detail, but now, it was something so far-fetched.

If you knew me and if you knew him, you easily recognized what was there.

I don’t believe too much in formalities — they’re nice, but not necessary. Words are great, but actions are exquisite — which is how I know that those months leading up to his departure were riddled with clues that we cared for and enjoyed one another as much as two people could. Neither of us liked to throw the word “love” around. The stakes just seemed too high when that happened. It wasn’t something we said out loud often, but it was understood and comfortably grounded. I will always believe that’s the best love you can hang on to — the kind that doesn’t have to be validated or proven or spoken. I tried to keep that thought at the front of my mind as I stood in the Wal-Mart checkout line with a pregnancy test in hand.

Women talk. So when I explained that broccoli had started to taste horrible to me and that I had truly lost my taste for beer and alcohol (all things that I enjoy), they cocked their heads in my direction like hungry hens waiting for the feed to drop. They wouldn’t ask me outright, but they ran down the checklist — late period? Sensitive gag reflex? Nausea? Lower back pain? Tender *******? Some of these things I did have, but see, I just lost one of the most important people in my life to the Pacific Ocean. Of course my body was going to respond to that stress in weird ways. I mean, let’s not jump to any conclusions, right? I couldn’t be pregnant. I wasn’t supposed to have a child yet. I was planning to teach abroad, see at least three other continents before I sunk my roots back into the good ol’ mid-Atlantic region and settle down with some poor, unsuspecting fellow.

The idea of it though — it being his child, our child — there was part of me that immediately softened to that idea and an even larger part of me that hoped for it.

As I waited for the customers in front of me to check out, I read the fine print on the box through its smudged security case. What can possibly be so hard about peeing on a stick? That thought stuck fast in my brain as I took aim and nailed my target like a champ in the bathroom the next morning. In the three minutes that followed, I thought this might be the easiest thing I would do all week. It was the easiest thing I had done all week, until those three minutes were up, and I read my results.

I learned, in that moment, that fate has a way of dealing us the hand that we need, without fail, every time. We simply get to choose how to play it.

A soul like your own,
So much in common,
Its like your own reflection.
A straight connection all the way to the heart from the mind,
Two souls making one;creating one big unbreakable bond
How beautiful it would be to have a twin in soul,
How wonderful.