when they tell me that I am a star
and when they tell me that I’m bigger on the inside, that I remind them of the universe
my eyes are planets and my skin is stardust
I’m a home
I’m the adventure
I’m spine to the book
I’m the book itself
I am made of something else entirely, but I am never human.
bright green ocean eyes, I look back at you, when you look at me
desperately, are there galaxies on my tongue, when we kiss?
beneath the sand paper shell on my lips, too much coffee, too many drunken cigarettes. is it that which keeps the cosmic dust under my eyes like dark rings
orbiting nothing?
resting where I’m bruised from a lack of sleep and an overdose of citalopram?
is there a solar system sitting in the space behind the back of my knee
when I’m lying face down in the bath, empty and hardly warm at all,
staying up until 4 am screaming whilst I reorganise myself, the universe of chaos that I am
dusting the stars of the sorrows they burden as you point up to exclaim how beautiful they are.
I have been given too much responsibility here
the stars light the night sky, but see
who’s filling the space in between? tiny and distant, too small to properly distinguish, I must be drowning in the blackness
but in the morning when I am gone I can no longer see, my use is diminished and you cannot see me, anymore
this is when I close my eyes and I see the darkness I’m supposed to avoid, the darkness you ignore, and I try to whisper to the other stars
“be the night”
but they are tired, too.
they are awake at 4 am weeping into the emptiness and their mother, far away, hums quietly like a motorway
but her voice, calm, she says to us “be the abyss,
be that which engulfs,
make them uncomfortable with how big you are, how loud, how infinite.
fill the spaces they told you not to fill, the spaces which one cannot ignore.”
and then there is a light. but not a starlight.
I am not extraterrestial
I am the space in between your words
I am not the keys by the door
or the opening of eyelids
I am the wind that carries the balloon and the static in-between fingertips
I am neither stars nor hurricanes, I do not sit amongst satellites
but I am the stillness that carries them, and the storm, and i let it ride.
I am not bad, but I sure as hell am not good, and
I am not made of stars.
I am the darkness.
and when you have been gazing up at me, you have misjudged in which place to look
because you see a tiny part of what I am, and then you tell me that I am beautiful.
I am sickly and real like the foolishness of life and I don’t scratch at the surface of the jar like I was a caged butterfly
but I smash the jar to pieces from above so my palms are as rough as yours
I am dangerous and boring in equal measure and you overcomplicate me so you have something to look at
because I am not a science, I am not your prose, I am not an equation and I certainly
am not for you to work out at all
and, my love, neither are the stars.
for you still cannot dictate to a universe no matter how many times you insist it startles you
because eventually it will **** you and as you have told me before
nothing which is beautiful does that which is ugly.
I am made of skin and bone and blood I will one day rot away, but for now I am warm
and that is fair, and my skin is thick, and my hair is soft
and I am kind.
but I am also ******, my thoughts often black, my hands red, I bruise blue.
I am callous and violent and though I am dangerous I do not hold my sword to fight you in battle. I hold the sword for myself.
and that much is true of the stars and I
that we burn bright. colossal, dangerous, lovely, lonely.
and you cannot tell a star how to shine
and you cannot tell me how to sit, softly
so merely we, the stars and I, are friends.
I am not it, it not me, and
I am not a metaphor, I am not a poem, I am not the universe at all
I am a woman.
and that is plenty enough.