Core—molten caramel center but
dead. dead. dead.
Hot.
Bleeding.
Then cool, small and massed. A
little red

button in the sky more than 400 times
the diameter of—I snap
my fingers.

Magician

star
gives birth to carbon, oxygen, and contract
gravitationally toward
the black clasped to
nowhere—an end melting
rock, evaporating ocean, stabilizing
expansion caught in
helium

flash—the metals of yesteryear
believed to exist inside
of you.