Space all fills up with futures
that flow between the cracks
of everything like water:

everything is murky thick
with what we could have had,
bay windows and granddaughters.

I swim through the parallel universe
in which you and I hold up
your father’s old desk between us,

tilting it to follow the bend
of the stairs and leaning it to rest
against the wall of our new place,

aching with the weight of it
and with the possibilities for how
we’ll organize ourselves together
in this new space.

An apartment that is empty
but not hollow.

Eating takeout on the floor
and imagining the bookshelves
we’ll build tomorrow.

Hit me with that difference
between nodes and cores
and processors, between
being me and being sure.
Tell me again how to
calculate it, I missed the
first time, don’t shout--

remind me the difference
between comets and asteroids
and meteors, and how computers
and space are not the same
because to me it’s all voids--
the Perseids could be anything
as long as I get to watch
something else burn as it falls.

The future used to be tomorrow.
Remember that?
Lying on our backs with our eyes
lit by the fire's glow, our hands
to the stars, our plans hurtling
towards us, raining from the sky.

The future used to be tomorrow.
Remember that?
Floating on our backs and if we
didn't have a sunrise, we'd borrow.

Water and wind build the air
up thick and the siren slices it
clean across the middle.

Across the suburbs and towns
people gather their books and
their computers and hunker down

in bathtubs and basements, tucked
into hallways with their feet splayed
amongst their families' shoes,

listening to dark skies and music
and other sounds, working by flashlight
while the fireflies drown.

I am the boat as it fills
with water and drops
like stone, and I am
the crane that pulls
it up to the surface, and I am
the knot that comes undone
and the boat that falls
again in earnest.

In the morning before work
I sit on the floor and pretend
that it’s dirt. I look out the window
and pretend that it’s church.
That gods of the earth and sky
and space all did their research
in collaboration to be sure
that today is worth it.

I need a little something
to remind me I should start.
A little piece to click in place,
then no more broken heart.