I thought we had a hundred years, a poem

If this is the kind of place where stray cats are fed

and stars pump their fuel

and ripped paper dolls are sewn back together again,

I think I’ll stay thank you very much.

I’ll lean my head upward so that

my jaw is another slope in the candy mountain range

and lick the honey sun with a tongue so thick

I think I’ll choke myself.

I’ll run down the streets when it is nighttime,

spin through the dark like some kind of murky nebulae

and emerge with a constellation that I’ll lace around my neck.

And when I begin to remember what alone feels like,

somewhere between these glass houses and French-perfumed alleys

your step will sound and your shadow, too,

and your hand, aged but familiar, will fall into mine.

You have the face of a deep lake, enclosed but mysterious,

I will tell you I have missed it, or at least the promise it held.

Nevertheless, a thousand boiling sunsets will trickle over our heads

like watered-down wine. A few roll behind us

but hundreds more swear to come.

the streets will throb with the world’s orbit,

our footsteps will shatter glass, a ceramic surrender.

Holding your hand, under a lemonade sun,

I will tell you I’m sorry,

that I forget what I was going to say.

But you tell me it’s okay.

The wind will go on beating.

So I, unafraid of the uncharted, will nest

into the crook of your pillow-elbows,

your heartbeat my propellor,

tuck my beak into the midnight galaxy,

the moons -- pale, flat organs,

left chasing after the stars in our wake.