11.07.2021

unnerved and fallen from the reach of your amazed groping dream that everything lives twice

I know where you go when you’re hoping 
to be happy: to your large, dark envelope, 
 
pricking points of light with your tiny pin. 
You call us stars, and use infantile words 
 
like twinkle and wish, and faraway. But we’re far 
from far. We’re in. And we’re old. 
 
We’re the deep, hot gleam in your wet, cold holes. 
We call them “eyes.” They are our only homes. 
 
We shine nowhere else. The sky is a smother 
of blank dust and explosion and vapor. 
 
In your “eyes” we see fear, what you call sparkle. 
We know it’s fear because we already died. We know 
 
how it felt. Listen: I am dead and you can’t see it. 
Do you know what this says about us both? 
 
I’m begging: please choose me to be your star. 
Wish on me. Love the oh-yes of my being dead 
 
enough to call it brightness. If I can’t be yours, 
I am just a dark scar pulling the skin of the sky, 
 
unnerved and fallen from the reach of your amazed 
groping dream that everything lives twice. 
 
That dream hurts me the best. I depend on it. 
Get a new envelope and make one new pinhole. 
 
Just one hole. Don’t try to save the others. 
Don’t bother. I’m the lucky one. It’s me. Me! 
 
[Brenda Shaughnessy {1970- } 'Card 17: The Star', from Our Andromeda]

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