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Firestar
Laurel Barton

I don't like the way our story goes but I'll write it down despite it all:
                       
                        (It's not like we're trying
                        (It's not like we should be))
 
We're staring at the sun –
we're radiant
we love with the gentlest consumption
Now –
I stare at you
and there isn't a name for what you are.
 
                        Let's call you holy.
                        Let's call you whole.
 
I can't understand what it would mean
to be that good
to be that good
to be that full of light
            My god, are you beautiful
            and my god, are you terrifying
 
Silently –
there's a girl screaming
inside the safe room in the house I hold within myself
the black box
 
Please
don't leave me alone with my hands
 
You hold stars to your chest like glass and you never see how they burn you up in the place
where it matters.
You become your choices.
A world crumpled.
 
                        what a life
                        what a life
                        this is what loneliness looks like
                        like looking through golden fingers
                        backlit with daybreak
                        and coming up
                                                                        empty
 
Now –
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS LIFE?
your body made of sunbursts
glass skin and paper hearts
Your body caving in on itself for heat, for touch, and I'm lying naked beside you wanting.
A hopelessness that doesn't win
Imagine that.
 
                        I don't know what to call you
                        but it isn't brave
                        I don't know what bravery looks like
but it isn't me
 
"Five AM and Falling In Love"
ass-up and his fresh fingers make it hard to scratch these words on the page
and maybe if I move enough
maybe if I scream and bleed enough
I'll know myself as a poet
and not some half-baked kid convincing god
he's still something to believe in
 
too distracted by coffee stains and newer stains
spreading like spilt milk down the sides of these softs sheets
and I'm star-struck love-struck
rammed in the throat by shock dragging cold nails up my back
all goosepimpled flesh pinned tight
and nothing short of promise under that ugly ceiling staring back at us
 
and I'm watching you walk away from the base of the stairs
and you're staring at me like my mother on Sunday morning
my teeth are falling out like a string of broken pearls
and nothing short of promise in the hard pain of knees dropped down on concrete
 
            tell me:
                        When did you become a you?
                        When did I stamp your life onto this page?
                        What makes you permanent?
 
You.
A pool of moonburst drowning me.
You,
with your crinkled black-eyed smile.
Well I'm choking down air trying to shape your name out of my mouth
while you're choking on me.
 
                                    babylon is still young and
                        we're still trying to find ourselves but
                        we're looking in all the wrong places
                       
                                    and we're flying down the highway flooded full with promise
                                                and we're scratching light into our bodies trying to connect
                                                                        But it's not violent. We're not violent.
I don't know how this story ends but I know how we will write it --
with some certain kind of softness.

FRONTIER MOSAIC

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