Today we heard a man’s voice
coming from the whip-cracking static:
he says it’s not that expensive
to buy a star.
You laughed in chimes and told me
that there are some things
not worth owning. You own so many hearts,
but a star is a silly purchase.
A worthless nothing to you.
We lie together that night, a small hotel,
riverside highway on our way to the moon,
and your skin clutches mine
a hungry animal, fleshing out to my own,
all shivering lust. You are aloof, I know it, you
don’t even care. The lies of love
are on your face, I can feel it.
What I might trace there
if only I could find my fingertips,
tracing the contours of your lips.
“That diamond necklace I bought you
looks beautiful at night,” you say.
But honestly it’s choking me,
weighing me down as you breathe
these words into my lungs.
The hideous transgressions that limit
the capacity of your soul, and mine--
my heart, captured there, fleeting
until the next breath bursts.
I feel like them, all the rest,
the girls you pretended to love
the girl I am pretending will change you.
If they didn’t come back to you,
hungrier than before,
you didn’t do your job right.
It’s the way you think,
what I can see on you every day.
I may not be any different than the rest,
but I know better than the best of them.
Like now: I can see you, the heart of stone
the ice of your face on fire
as we move from room to
bone-white room.
In my sultry silver skin, bathed in moonlight,
we sat beneath those stars, and you said,
“I bought one for you, named it for you,
I will forever keep it for you.”
A ball of ice and gas and fire is no longer
a worthless nothing
so long as it spells l.o.v.e.
in nauseating simplicity, no effort
on your part. You don’t have to choke
the words down, cough them up,
until next year. But you’ll already have gone.
A star is finally worth something
because I will always be worth nothing.
I hate being sucked into this circadian rhythm,
a habitual love and lie. If only
I could look at you
without questioning,
if you own half the stars in the sky,
who the rest still shine for.