You are the sun. I am just constellations, so close yet too far to feel your warmth. You are bright and beautiful. I get boring after watching for a while, just there, lost within the darkness. I can’t help but think about you, every moment possible – not in a weird, ****** way – but thoughts of your thumb caressing mine as our fingers interlock; of your tiresome voice at 3am, when you’re slurring your words and your eyelids become heavy. The passion and excitement in your voice as you speak of music and literature. The way your warm arms wrap around my skinny body when I tremble as the cold air blows against my skin, all of that is just amazing to me. You aren’t just average, a generation of the human race, nor are you just a son or a friend. You are a beautiful masterpiece crafted by the hands of God Himself, He is Michelangelo and you are David; you are the most beautiful and perfect combination of atoms, you are my Mona Lisa, my art. The sparkle in your eyes when you speak of life and the meaning to it says it all. I fall into oblivion each time I just imagine your skin against mine; not in a ****** way, but in a sweet and caring way. I love the way you say my name and look into my eyes, as if analyzing my soul, figuring me out. That usually makes me feel uncomfortable, but it’s you… and that makes the difference, the fact that it’s you thinking why I say each and every word I say when I say it.  You are Augustus Waters (without the cancer) and I am Hazel Grace Lancaster (without cancer and not as beautiful). You are ambitious and amusing, whilst I am a cautious bookworm. My room is full of unread books and loose sheets of paper with what seem to be meaningless words scribbled all over. Your room is possibly filled with guitars and old records of your favorite bands and artists from the ‘80’s and ‘90’s and old trophies you now find meaningless.

But I want to know more about you. Even if I could know every possible thing there is to know about you, I will keep observing and I will keep spilling my heart to you, and listening when I have to. I want to know the passion in your voice when you read your favorite book, quote, poem, or even word. I want to know your thoughts at 5am when your eyelids feel like heavyweights. I want to experience seeing you laugh hysterically to the point where your rib cage hurts and you cry from the laughter; when you’ve reached your breaking point and you’re curled up, or on the floor, crying until your heart literally hurts and your chest is looking for release; I want to experience it all, I want to know you and not just a part of you. I want to know all of you. The way you fall asleep, how you are the moment you wake up and how you react when you had a nightmare. The human mind is so beautiful, and out of all minds I could observe, I chose you – not just the mind, but you. What makes your heart race, what gives you goose bumps, everything. You’re my observation and I enjoy it.

12pm. Time is still, and just as the day begins, the anxiety seems to creep into my psyche. I don’t understand why, but my eyes are suddenly attached to the clock, watching every passing second go by in that dreadful time machine. The seconds hand is ticking away, life passing me by, and all I can do is stare at that hand on that clock mocking me. My best friend is standing beside me. She just got her phone taken away from our fifth grade teacher, but all I can do is stare at that clock across the room. To my friends this was a fun Wednesday afternoon at school full of board games and empty journals. But this could easily be labeled as the worst Wednesday of my life, full of emptiness and countless of journals with pages based on a twelve year old girl, a girl I once was, pouring my heart out.
Seconds, minutes, hours go by. Before I could even prepare myself its 3:05. My mother isn’t there to pick me up, but a family friend. The car ride: silent, awkward, full of still energy. My friend is sent up to her room, and I didn’t understand why. I thought maybe it was my fault for playing too rough, but then I understood. I understood the stares and the silence. I finally understood the stillness in the air, and the endless glances at the clock. At last, I understood why my heart had sunk in my chest when time stood still at 12pm. I understood why even though my mind was detached from agendas for so long before, my heart had become one with time in that moment. But I laughed, denying how well I understood being only 12 years old.
Five minutes later. The door opens and I see a mother. My mother, I suppose, but the light had been drained from her eyes, and her stare was dead. My mother, who learned to live for others, died along with her father at 12pm. Her soul was as attached to her father as my heart was to that dreadful clock on that Wednesday afternoon, and just as my heart sunk, her soul sunk into the depths of the earth alongside my grandfather, a man I once knew. A man who stopped my world at 12pm.

I.

pink satin masks
blood and broken toes.
i keep effortless poise
while knees and lungs shake.

i dance in tattered tutus,
in old toe shoes,
for a pocketful of coins;

i dance until i am blind with joy,
until my lungs are full of trumpet shouts,
until i am exhausted and weightless,

until my audience is standing,
breath gone, knowing what it is to be--

II.

in the storm of applause
one gnarled hand launches a torch.

"you danced with me," i cry--
her lips seal shut.
wild, cold eyes watch
flames singe my feathers,
fuse flesh to bone,
floorboards collapse.

she stays until she hears
my heart stop.

at dusk,
the stage is ash.

III.

at dawn,
a chorus of mouths emerge from the ground,
my audience, full-throated, white-knuckled,
tchaikovsky hollowing cheeks,
nasoprotivnyia daruia;
knuckles white--

flat-footed, slack-jawed,
the arsonist stands--

and i ascend from the dirt
on pillars of diamond forged from ash,
while my bare feet spill blood and i say
look at the source of my strength--
while new wings spread,
blood-red and gilded and brilliant in the sun--
while fire sprouts like flowers from my palms,
while spiders wrap my toes in silk
and i dance on thick-tongued harmonies
that tremble the earth with new roots
and i bourrée across the green trunks

and i become the sun