My Cosmonaut
Scouring the stars for me
His life is all night and glitter
As I watch from my little marble
He floats
He flies
My Cosmonaut will rise
To the challenge
And bring a little space back
For me

There in the field she came to me,
The last of the silver honeybees.
I could see the years worn in her face,
Lost in the dark, one foot in the grave.

She held the ache behind her eyes,
So young to have her throat closed tight.
Poor girl, an orphan, with ribs of steel
Bone cage laced too tight to feel.

Then came the lonesome cosmonaut,
Betwixt the stars, those years he lost;
A nomad’s tale, nor here nor there
Too high up to come down for air.

Celestial darlings, they go round and round,
Dysphoric we hasten the final burnout:
From birth to evanesce, the hedons expire
Would love rot my teeth for afflictions less dire?

Last came the poet, out from the gloam
******* on pennies, and ink soaked through bones.
She gathered her strength and fell from the sky
While friends in high places twinkled goodbye.

He’s a chain smoker in his head
And a businessman with his hands
He was a cosmonaut at the bar
And a bear with the North Star

Jenny and Malcolm
lie in a field
on a hill
straddling the countryside
at midnight.
The grass tickles
their toes and noses
as it flows up
getting the stars.
Jenny passes the roach
and sings the blues.
Malcolm casts
a long line of smoke,
fishing for meteors.

"You think
there's anyone
out there?"
Jenny asks.

"I knew a kid,"
Malcolm says,
bobbing his head
to Hendrix,
"18, in Philly,
went to grab
a bag of dope,
but his buddy's brother,
he was nine at the time,
wouldn't go,
so he had to go,
thought it would be quick
so he brought him
but forgot the cash
and tried to dash,
but the kid wasn't so fast.
They caught him
and laid him to rest
with his head on the curb
and teeth in the gutter.
After that, he said
he couldn't be the same,
forever paranoid,
society pushing him
towards suicide
or addiction.
Desensitized
he decided
he wasn't made for this place
so he got high
and rode a cloud
out beyond
where we stare now."

You're a solar system,
and I'm a rogue cosmonaut who
(having fallen in love with you  through a telescope)
has built a ship from the salvage
of lesser explorations;
now I spend my days
(or nights— hard to tell)
looking at you, chin in hand,
waiting for a place to land.

Her name,
passing over your lips
like the cosmonaut's smile
at first sight of the Earth.

Since birth, she has been
swimming the stars, but still
never goes beyond dipping her toes
when the shoreline hisses withdraw.

As her earth gives
my sea his home, I wonder-

Would she let me
take her hand, gently,
walk her out a bit deeper.

Would she hold me, fiercely,
lift up from the wet sand,
her bare feet, trust the sea, trusting me.

While earth, sea, and stars all hold each other dearly,
however distant they may be,
Her deepest fears all devoured
by a pack of wild ladybugs.

All I hear are muffled sounds
as I walk slowly, closer toward the light.
Today is the final step in which I’m bound
by duty and history I’m about to write.
Everywhere I look are cheers
from people I do not know;
their spirits are high above the skies.
Beneath my mask is a certainty unclear
of the task I am about to undergo;
no time now to say proper goodbyes.
Up calmly, ascending the stairway to the unknown,
my heart pacing more rapidly than before.
Though safe in numbers I feel more alone,
all courage and might I now implore.

Radio sounds buzzed and fed through the lines;
the countdown now comes down to Five, four,
three, two, one—my ears ring from the sounds combined;
this is what it means, what it feels to be alive.
All signs seem well, so far so good;
though I feel as if my weight is pulled down.
Everything looks so small, so minute,
so close yet so far as it really is should;
it’s into unfamiliar ground we’re abound.
Left and struck with awe, I see no one up here;
dark matter clouds all thoughts of fear,
as the stars shimmer even closer in space.
This memory, this single moment will never disappear—
up and away into a sweet unfamiliar embrace.

I wish you could hear my heart thumping from the miles between us.

I wish that your finger tips could glide across every inch of my skin just as an ice skater skims the freshly smoothed canvas their feet call home.

You are my home.

I wish I was a snowflake in your hair, I would cling to each strand tightly and become one with every cell, creating a bond between us stronger than any atom.

Then maybe part of me would be stuck to you forever.

In the summer you’d have the memory of the sky I came from and the stars that created me.

The sky was clear the night I met you; each star twinkling with its own perception of fate.

I want to become cosmonaut, so I can visit each destiny. Maybe then, I could find the one that fits us best. The one that would have made you stay.

One night you told me how we should count them all. Tossing our thoughts in the sky recklessly, desperately trying to match the dim lights above in uncertainty.

The darkness consumed our thoughts, ******* them into a black hole that gave no promise for return. Those twinkling thoughts diminished, lost in the vastness of space, forgotten as they slipped away into the night.

The coldness of space is unforgiving and so is your love.

You branded your name on my heart, each letter making a permanent home in my flesh.

The scar of your love is something that my body will never part with, but I wasn’t good enough for you.

I could never take care of you the way I needed to.

The stakes were too high, the distance too vast. It was too good to be true, too bittersweet, and all the other sappy clichés in the book.

I trusted you, with my heart and though you broke it in two, I’d do it all again if I knew that you’d try.

If I knew that you believed that our love was stronger than the bigots around us, and that you believed that the love I gave was enough.

The thought of you resides in the back of my mind; occupying my subconscious like a living dream.

I can still hear your voice just as clear and crisp as it will ever be.

My body begs for you, but all I can feel is your ghost.

Your presence lingers in the air above my bed dancing about in the night masquerading as fireflies.

They used to be my nightlight. Now they fuel an insomnia that is colder than night itself.

Forgetting you is not just as simple as putting your picture away.

I might have to suffer from a concussion that will bless me with mind numbing amnesia just to forget the way you touched my soul.

Your love will forever be infused in my veins and whether or not it haunts me I’m sure it’s not something

I’d reluctantly get rid of, unless I had no other choice.

So I will continue to cherish those memories, no matter how painful. In hopes that someday you’ll come running back to me.

Your voice was soft and there was something about your disposition that could just lull me to sleep. It’s not because you were boring, hell I could listen to you for hours.

No, you were gentle with every word that you spoke almost as if you were tiptoeing around the harness in this world. You candy coated it for me, almost like you were protecting me from something.

I remember the night I met you, the second you gazed upon me with those pool-blue eyes, was the moment my heart started play a soft concerto of love.

It hasn’t stopped since. You were the muse to the melody of every step I took. And in the first month that

I knew you, I was born again.

I dragged my feet on the sidewalk every night I went to get a cup of coffee. Along the way I’d coach myself.

My insomniac ways needed to learn to take in the night air with each stride, allow my chest to beat with all that I feel.

Every day is a new day and so is the moon, and just maybe you could teach me how to fly because baby you make my heart sing.

For each night that dragged me out just so that my drooping eyes could find something sweeter to look at than the cold air above my bed.

Each and every night that I’d find you again in that that coffee shop window, my heart composed a new tune.

I swear by now, my body has created an infinite number of songs for you.

One night, I said that my love for you shined brighter than the solar system and spanned wider than the universe.

I guess my cliché cosmonaut tendencies rubbed off on you because you asked me if I ever wanted to travel to the moon. And I said that I’d only do it with you by my side.

That was the night that I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.

But bend and break comes hand in hand with eve and flow.

Bind my soul to everything I crave then toss me aside like I’m nothing.

There’s something about this silence. It sends chills through my entire body.

The fear of being alone strung through the back of my brain. Leaving my head caught in a whirlwind of thoughts, a warpath of emotions.

That’s what you did to me.

Leaving every fiber of my being screaming for help, red tunnel vision in sight. Screaming, but with no audible words.

You played with heartstrings, turning my vital organs in to sick love puppets.

The butterflies that rage in the pit of my stomach suffocating me as they crowd the back of my throat.

Our love was like a thunderstorm, two fronts clashing, composing a volatile connection that sent everyone running.

You knew the rain was coming and so did I. I was a fool to think that you would stay, but I was enchanted by your soul. Put under a spell by those swimming pool blue eyes.

I loved you, and in return you taught me the greatest lesson in life. Don’t love someone, it hurts too much.