solving the two-body problem
Stars—the peeping holes of time,
brazen boned and slick smiled and
naïve to the patchwork quaintness
of salt, of pavement, of disease—
ferry the passage of light
through the paper-thin opportunities
between each tick of the clock
and carve our likeness into all things.
He hailed from the diamond
(BPM 37093) so I condoned his natural
arrogance and callous gravity.
He was a terrible lover but
a perfect storyteller,
for he spoke always from a distance,
and this distance became our world.
The monsoons on Neptune reminded
him of home—the uneasy temperament,
the glass strings of the cat's cradle,
the brilliant fugue of porcelain blue—
but they spoke to me of greed, the kind
which circumvents umbrella pleasantries
and expands to fill each space it enters.
A grave truth, an inevitability.
Two in the universe is lonely,
enough for lines but not closed loops
(the geometrical foundations of love)
and thus, we parted quietly.
I invented artefacts for evidence,
a night sky of heart-shaped lockets,
through which he sails unstirred.