starspun

we inhale the romanticism
of hooded cemetery kids
smoking cigarettes pretending
they are not dead.
you were always so sure
about my uncertainty,
you watched
all my pick up lines
drop things
into open graves
meant for us.

your eyes always wandered
down thoughtful
leaf-strewn paths.
i wanted to ask you
if i could follow
but i came alone this time

i remember our innocence
in the static b e t w e e n
stars, think
about how youth without you is th-
awing out the lines in my whittled-out eyes

i look to the hooded
cemetery kids,
wonder what we'd have been like
if we grew up as nothings,
like them. teenage
nothings with chiseled
marble in our
voices

i settle for a star.
it's almost as luminous
as the afterglow of us,
almost as eerie as the cookie cutter continent
we pledged allegiance to
just because we were raised that way

i wanna know
what it's like to break the rules,
to be embodied by rebellion and (t)reason.
my voice trembles,
asks the hooded
cemetery kids
how

glances aside, grins
with every intention to show me.
limbs contract in protest &
leaves crunch beneath
two bodies.

wakes up with hand
between legs beneath
a tearless sky. catch
sight of a star,

i wonder what that star would have been like
if it had been a planet
with technicolor
comets in its orbit.
instead i wander from the leaf-strewn churchyard,
walk in the direction of you,
and wonder
if maybe it's better for stars
to stay as they are