My chest might be a neutron star
stellar remnants, gravitational collapse.
I put on each gold necklace I own at the same time, stare at my fair sternum.
Look at how gentle I am, despite.
I thought I heard rain on the roof.
I go outside with a menthol and cat in my armpit,
it’s dry and thirty-two degrees in March. I wanted the rain. I wanted to have
something to cry about, a mess to clean up, a mud puddle to find
the silver lining in again.
You know whiskey still claws at me,
that bottle with paint and nats in it in Paradise.
I’ve been dry since we last spoke.
We all must find our baptism, blue shift, bodhi tree, benedictine.
I unearthed mine
in West Virginia around a bunch of boozers and hillbillies
and one stained glass window   inside a cathedral the size of my living room.
You know, I pray almost every night
that you aren’t thinking of me.
Sometimes I wish to luminaries   that no one is thinking of me.
Because maybe then, I’d be able to remove this blue spruce stick in the dam
and let it flood let it flood let it flood let it flood let it flood let it flood let it flood
without everyone seeing
the shale, a dead wild turkey, morels, ants, blood, beetles, caterpillars, old campsites.
But that’s the funny thing about being a human.
We live for this. We live for each other.
So can someone please place their hand on my
chest, this dying star, and I will do the same,
and maybe, just maybe,
we will make it to spring.
I think there is trillium there.