I tell my friend that I cannot
stop writing about your mouth.
That no matter the terror or war or issue
I sit down to think about,
your mouth is there, moments after.
And my friend says that for him,
(he is not in love with anyone)
it is always the sky. When he wants to write something
but the mind has fits of wandering or laziness
instead of latching onto someone,
his mind goes up.

I try that, for a while. The difference
between the sky out in the mountains
velvet deep, with the stars’ hard nips of light, insisting
and the sky in the city, a veneer. Gray sheet of newsprint
with pinpricks, how the riot of earthbound light bleeds it
dry. I think of depth and shallowness
and your mouth.

The way you looked at me
when I put my hand into it.
How it felt as though I could keep going, forever, into
the sky with birds circling, their wings spread and
trembling inside you. In your throat, which science
would call a small, red aperture, I stumbled
into a summer night. Stars heavy and silver,
so close and humid
it seemed they could be plucked.
Qualities of light and permanence.
Nothing that you see is really yours.

Map of the world from space at night,
how dark are the poor countries. In our homeland, so
many lights, how it looks like the sky,
galaxies clotting heavy on the coasts
other places nearly bald with darkness.

Messages we believe are hung there. Pictures
of heroes and animals.
Pictures of
monsters and brides.