The dinosaurs are dead.
Really dead.
Someday you will be too.

i love you.
and no i don't mean,
i love you, like i'm trying to make empty conversation.
more vacant than the mailbox of the widow next door,
who hasn't left the house in eight years because the sunlight's embrace still feels like his.
i've never been one for small talk.

i love you
and no i don't mean,
i love you - like it's february 14th and i'm thirsty for someone to tell me i'm beautiful,
so i'd sell my soul to you
and stain your bitter lips with my name.

"i love you"
but you won't call me back next week
because i gazed in to your eyes like you were oxygen and i was struggling to breathe.
rather than you were a poem painted across the sky
that i was dying to read.
an excited grin flirting with my rosy lips, entangled with elation.

i mean *i love you
like my eyes become the north star when you laugh,
i see your face etched between the stanzas of love poems,
and i hear your voice in the wind's autumn serenade.

i mean i love you
like i'm a fifty year old alcoholic with wine stains on my carpet
and i'd still choose you over that bottle of liquid elation in the cabinet.
here i am. stumbling on my words,
choking on the poetry weaved into your smile.

and "i love you" -
the sun's fiery kiss against my skin
reminds me of yours.
and when my bones age, and your presence fades into the horizon like daytime's end.
your absence will burn like cherry wine flirting in the back of my throat.
i may fear sunlight too.

i love you.

                                               (m.c.)

light the sky
with my stars
that i made myself.
we can stand
hand in hand
looking at the navy clouds.
breathing air
for both of us
let the fire fade,
like our tears.
we can watch these beauties glow.
light the air
with my heart
because you and I
we are lanterns
we are stars.

I always saw a fascination in the stars, the far away galaxies
Your eyes, the creases in your hands
The way these all formed together in a constellation
Exploding with stellar being
Everything about you was celestial.

Hours studying Zodiac signs left me empty
I needed to find myself in your solar system
Forcing life onto other planets
Deserted meteors I saw in your mind
I wanted to restore you.

As I looked to you I felt ablation
My mind melting away the ideas of horoscopes
Making room for you and your astro being
Never once wanting any sort of apastron
I awaited the chaos.

You are an evolved star
Burning out slowly, ever so
Sinking to be extragalactic
A place I never imagined
I was far from extraterrestrial.

But orbiting around you I felt the brightness of our galactic halo
Pushing deeper to reach your nucleus, I became your gravity
As one, our luminosity pressed tightly on all sides
Forcing darkness to disband, a large nova exploding from us
And now we are an elliptical galaxy.