Thin music played as we danced uneven
circles around tempermental light flickering,
a bonfire built lopsided in the metal bowl--

you handed me a glow-stick then broke yours,
shaking the torn end so the liquid spattered
your hair, head, shoulders, and the grass,

dew-wet around your mud-stained sneakers.
You reflected the constellations overhead--
mirrored as they were in your backyard pond

when we went night-swimming with silver
fish ******* on our toes. We spent the night
discussing first impressions and each other--

you admitted I was your kind of person
even though I thought you were weird,
too short a boy with too high a voice.

I soon learned you were a hurricane tied down,
and you convinced me I had not once been less
than spilled starlight--that’s why my skin

glowed beneath fluorescent lighting, untouched
by the sun’s aggression burning freckles,
cosmic dust dappling my nose and cheeks.

You said: “It’s always been the way of man,
born as living mirrors for nature to see itself.”