i cut myself loose from gravity, spend
a homesick light year crying about the
view out the window. so much empty,
and only my body to fill it.
pick a star i’ve already outlived, watch
how it blooms. ask where its grief lives
and if anything has grown from it yet.
i wish there was nothing inside me
but heat that consumes itself. i could
orbit my own breath, fevered and
improbable. wherever i go, the stars
already know me. they echo back
a hundred-year chorus of radio static.
we’ve loved you for so long, they say,
here are the songs and the wars and
the hopes you flung out and never
expected to be returned. you’re made of
our deaths, but we can call it even.
out here, the constellations fall apart
into artifacts of distance. love
is the same kind of casualty.