Let the world come hungry at me.

Let the hours learn the tender curve

of this neck. For so long I’ve wanted

to believe that I’m made of star stuff,

a glittering spigot

funneled from the blue spiraling arms

of our milky way.

I hear

the clap of hands inside my chest.

I swallow. The body

softening against it. Who hasn’t wanted

to climb atop a roof and jump,

prove we too can come back

like the tulips after a bitter winter. A small body

pulled from dark,

a city of animated dust. I believe

sleep is night’s apology for day,

dreams the only respite from dark. I dream

of fog, fog slowing morning minutes.

Another day drained.       Still,

there has only ever been one setting sun,

one rotating light chasing one unreachable

horizon

for billions of years.

A small good miracle,

were I swallowed into a black hole

I could live without shadow. I could live

inside that sunless system of tunnels.

I would be fine

dying there. And still, there is the question:

More god or less?

Me, I could go either way.

I have been told
that nearly all the atoms in the oxygen

we breathe

and the carbon in our skin

fell from the hydrogen furnace of a star,

which makes us less star stuff and more
nuclear waste,

weeds in a field of buttercups.

 

Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 1.

See all items about Kristene Kaye Brown

Visit Kristene Kaye Brown’s contributors page.