I watch the traffic through cigarette smoke,
That dances with sighs frosted by winter,
Released into the cold, electric air
By strangers standing close, yet all alone.

And through the blurry neon reflections,
Cast on windows adorned with icicles,
Where the colors bleed along frozen panes,
Something that shouldn’t be there caught my eye.

I thought I saw your shape form in the glass,
But ghosts don’t walk beneath the city lights,
Waiting for someone to follow behind
And lead them through forgotten memories.

Yet no one turns as the traffic drones on,
As I leave to light one more cigarette
And walk by the glass where you might have been,
Where my ghost joins yours in the cold window.
©️2025 David Cornetta

As neon pulses through a sleepless night,
The sidewalks bustle with wandering ghosts,
And vapor rises — a mist of pale steam
From streets that glint beneath an autumn rain.

I see a woman in a ruby coat;
Her shadow pools round her feet, like spilled ink,
As she tries to mouth a name through the haze —
A name unheard over the subway’s groan.

She’s gone before the streetlights flicker, but
Her shadow lingers a moment longer,
Stretching out beneath the gilded lamplight —
But was she ever even there at all?

No answer falls with the September rain,
No hint comes drifting on the pallid mist.
And still the train rumbles on unconcerned,
And I can’t recall why she had mattered.

The neon curdles within its veins,
While darkness swallows the ruby echo,
And I walk these streets among the phantoms,
To fade at last into the night once more.
©️2025 David Cornetta

Glowing far beneath a band of burning crystal,
He drifted through silence, heartbroken and distal—
A whisper of frost left behind by trailing light,
As the comet passed far above in endless night.

He sang to distant suns, though they raised no refrain;
His voice, just a glimmer beneath the comet’s train.
No orbit, no axis, in his celestial drift—
Just the chill of pale starlight, too distant to shift.

Yet, far on the curve of the comet’s silver flare,
She wandered through silence, though as yet unaware—
A shimmer in motion and untouched by regret,
Her path not his own, though it had not diverged yet.

Though light-years apart in their transcendent array,
A trace of astral longing had altered her way,
Their paths, though still distant, were to cross in the night,
Beneath the comet, passing by in stellar flight.
©️2025 David Cornetta

From my debut collection—If Saturn Should Fall— now available!

I trace your name across the night,
With solar ink and lunar light,
Each syllable, a burning thread
‘Tween stars that have not shifted red
That I still count each night in bed.

I know you do the same for me
Beneath some distant canopy.
Upon your lips, my name a sigh,
A whispered vow to midnight sky
That tethers us, both you and I.

Our names are written line by line,
With diamonds set to intertwine
As constellations from above,
Devoted to the keeping of
The tacit truth of starlit love.
©️2025 David Cornetta

Follow me on Instagram for more and links to my debut collection “If Saturn Should Fall”
@sanddpoetry

Would you dance among the stars with me,
Across the opaline galaxy,
And swirl the hem of your sable gown,
Where stardust stirs before falling down?

We’d glide around the rings of Neptune,
Untouched by the distant solar swoon.
His moons could softly light our ballroom,
Suspended where the nebulae bloom.

Triton’s glow will send a silver beam,
Casting shadows in our cosmic dream,
While his frosty crystals, hanging near,
Become our glittering chandelier.

Yet all I seek in this celestial tide
Is not the stars—only you by my side.
For even galaxies collapse and die,
But a love like ours will outlast the sky.

©️2025 David Cornetta

Follow me on Instagram for more and links to my debut collection “If Saturn Should Fall”
@sanddpoetry