You coil in the doorway
and look at me
with eyes
a snake just sits
and looks at me
until I am afraid of it.

but the inflection of the human voice
saying God only knows,
she doesn't say it like God
is the only one
who knows;
not: God, only, knows,
but God only
knows.
She knows and says nothing.
God is not one to kiss
and tell.
She keeps some things
to Herself, doesn't share everything
with me. Think
how sad a couple of souls
would be if truly
one, grown
so together that they are
once again alone.
God only knows
what I'd do without you;
nothing more.

the sun is setting in slant
through the window, outlining
everyone in gold thread

there’s loud music and
laughter and RESERVED
tables full of people eating and
laughing like they’re at any tables
at all

at the end the music is still
playing
and the sun is still slanting its way
down but the rainbow flag is draped
over the dusty piano to free up her hands
so she can clean other things. everything
is tidied up, things gathered, minimizing
space taken

the stickers, the flags
of all combinations of colored stripes,
pink and blue and purple sunsets,
prism rainbows, the black table cloth
stretched out below the window
as two people fold the sunlight into it,
packing it away. name tags
are peeled off shirts. In the end,

they leave with a whole
foods canvas bag full of things
that could be anything,
ready to blend back
into everything else.

the sun ducks behind a mountain
on the horizon and the sky purples,
bruised by indifference. the sun ducks
behind a mountain on the horizon and
no one is outlined anymore.

There are two ways to fall
in love with the stars.
Each begins with a child on her back,
asphalt and grass,
looking up.

Each begins with a reaching.

There are two ways to fall
in love with the stars. Each begins
with a feeling of light that is cold,
of the glow of afar, of nothing
but the magnetic math
of the vacuum between here

and there.

Each begins with finding
light in dark.

She can at this point grab the tail
of her hope in a telescope,
wonder at the whole mirrored mess,
open her aperture as wide as her heart
and stretch the shutter speed as long
as her patience, let in all the light

she can.

She can mesh her fingers through Orion's,
standing ready to help him catch
the Pleiades that hover above his hand,
she can hold his sword for him
for a while.
She can brush her fingertips along
Andromeda's straining arms, soothe
the chained flesh of her wrists. She
can trace faces in the sky
with her kind touch,
ladle warm soup for every one,
scratch the bears behind their ears
to keep herself coming undone.
She can blush, timid to reach
the extra lightyear that will bring
her hands to Cassiopeia's hair.

Or then she can
calculate the cold,
Orion's sword a pen, fight
through the mechanics
for the dynamics
and get there.

On the backs of receipts
and physics formula sheets
I've been drawing compasses.
Needles pointing randomless,
concentric circles, shaky lines
creeping outside their contours
and I don't need you to tell me
I'm an amateur.
I already can't
find my way.

This is a lightly used copy of Nancy Drew.
This is an eraser shaped like a softball.
This is a bit of unraveled tennis racket grip.
This is an empty paper picture frame–
this is the picture that went in it.

I leave them all down south. Here,
I have only what I need:
the books, the periodic tables on the walls,
the dried leaves she collected for me
and had laminated last fall.
The star charts and on the top
shelf the glass jar of dead roses.
The little drawings she left me
on the backs of receipts, the graphs
of crystal shapes and symmetries.

I have only what I need now.
I am surrounded by me,
having survived my youth, ready
to start telling the truth.

This is a string of beads with half
a heart in the middle.
This is the remnant of a joint collection
of bobble-head turtles;
these are the heads that have fallen off.

Now look how much farther
they can see.

Dead flowers are brittle, break
easy.
Dust covers the things you gave me,
mutes them, claims them, overtakes
them, squeezing the pages of books
together until they choke,
clouding the glass jar that you use
as a vase for the dead flowers.

Dead flowers do not need water, live
easy.
You made
the bed this morning
so if memory failed me
I would have no way of seeing today
that you were here last night.
And when I blink my eyes,
for that moment they're closed
I cringe with the sudden goodbye,
every instant turned away from your face
filled with the graceless empty
of having just finished a book.
No longer able to live in its eyes,
burrow into its spine, nestle
into the crook
of its neck.

dead flowers are brittle, break easy,
please, please be careful
with this–