You reached out to me
When I thought I was falling

You held me
When I felt broken

You loved me
When I didn't love myself

I thought you'd love me through it all
But you saw the cracks and screamed

Left me shackled
Like Andromeda
And now all I want is to feel the power
That Circe felt when she turned men into what they truly were...
Animals

My fingers dance across your skin
and small constellations I trace;
There rests Aries on your collar,
and Andromeda frames your face.

Though you’ve labeled these stars a flaw,
I can’t stop myself from thinking
Aphrodite herself did bring
these small constellations to being.

the celestial bodies may crash

and burn the sight from my eyes.

but I see you in my mind:

dancing through the galaxy.

and that gives me the right to eternity.

the black holes may swallow

and leave my chest hollow and dusted.

but I hear you in my head.

your voice carries across the empty nothing

and that gives me the right to eternity.

the universe may protest.

implode on itself.

disintegrate.

but I can feel you, despite it all:

you’re made of thousands of years behind you.

you run on rocket fuel and pure moonlight.

you live among fragments of time past;

stardust, spaceships, and singularities.

you chose me to hold your solar systems and make sure they orbit.

so I’ll ignore the meteor showers and the wormholes

and cherish our interstellar dust.

because I hold the right to eternity

and I am a space to be reckoned with.

and you’ll see the moon,

reflecting off the light of the sun.

you’ll see the blushing sunset,

dancing around the skirt of the night canvas.

you’ll see the pinpricks of stars,

dead for years yet shining just for us.

you’ll see the one spot in the sky,

where the artist never finished painting

the galaxy around the planets.

the milky way runs patterns across your eyes,

and dyes your shadow a silvery glow.

we’re all looking up at the sky,

searching.

for what, we don’t know.

don’t worry,

I’m looking too.

you stitch me together with moon cotton,

stardust stuck between the threads.

you bandage my raw wounds

with your favorite constellations.

when I’m hurting,

you kiss my head,

and intertwine the planets with my hair;

a daisy chain of celestial bodies.

you lay me down among the ghost town of rocket ships

and dead stars

and you whisper.

“darling,” you say,

“andromeda’s got nothing on you.”

Nashville and Andromeda
by Michael R. Burch

I have come to sit and think in the darkness once again.
It is three a.m.; outside, the world sleeps . . .

How nakedly now and unadorned
the surrounding hills
expose themselves
to the lithographies of the detached moonlight—
******* daubed by the lanterns
of the ornamental barns,
firs ruffled like silks
casually discarded . . .

They lounge now—
indolent, languid, spread-eagled—
their wantonness a thing to admire,
like a lover’s ease idly tracing flesh . . .

They do not know haste,
lust, virtue, or any of the sanctimonious ecstasies of men,
yet they please
if only in the solemn meditations of their loveliness
by the ***** pen . . .

Perhaps there upon the surrounding hills,
another forsakes sleep
for the hour of introspection,
gabled in loneliness,
swathed in the pale light of Andromeda . . .

Seeing.
Yes, seeing,
but always ultimately unknowing
anything of the affairs of men.

Published by The Aurorean and The Centrifugal Eye

Keywords/Tags: Nashville, Andromeda, universe, cosmos, meditation, introspection, loneliness, alienation, pen, writing, night, darkness, sleep, moonlight, love, lover, affair, affairs, haste, lust, virtue, ecstasy, knowing, unknowing, aware, unaware, oblivious

she had a darkness in her chest space shuttles hadn't explored.
it was said that stars died there.

You look beautiful, with a matchless splendor,
The taste of your voice
Breathtakingly delectable
To all the four senses
Eager to embrace you
With a sprightly endeavor,
You seem like an aesthetic vision
That I'd love to comprehend
With the mind of a cartographer
And eyes brimming with happiness,
You feel like a melange
Of glowing colours
Shedding those petals of dusk
That bind the hope of dawn
For a budding floret,
I only wish that somehow
I was able to map the distance
Which spreads persistently between
Your presence and my reverent arms,
Before it's too late
And this life spirals away
In meaningless motions and tasks

drawn to my sister planet
we tear out our hairs
the fiery sorts of dissent
into the depths of my apathy
climactic orbit in yearning
pushed against your clamour
i long to be obliterated
dispel this feeling of unfeeling
remove me