My mother told me
That the sky begins anew each night
In its race to run laps of the moon
And so each day is a chance to
Retry at life and forget
How yesterday our constellations
Became too numerous
And too tangled
In our attempts to almost touch
As if God washed us clean like linen
And ran us through the mangle
While we slept
And I always privately thought
That if we humans made constellations
There would surely be stars
That died whilst we still saw them shine
Stars that didn’t begin anew each day
Whatever light they might have dazzled her with
Because sometimes the message got delayed
In the WiFi
And people that we still saw as living
Had used up all their new beginnings
Elsewhere.
New Year and the newest thing that happened
Is that thirteen more stars
Have ridden too hard through their life cycle
And are no longer allowed to press retry
While the world fa-
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Paris first.