Collapsing Stars

Speak to me in iambic pentameter and weave Shakespeare sonnets with Milton anecdotes. Read me riddles and rhymes divulged over uneaten dinners and swing-sets with broken chains. Allow me to lip-synch to your ballad of broken piano-fingers and I will lay next to you in the dew grass and smoke memories wrapped in Marlboros. Paint anagrams for me in the colors of raindrops and oil spills. Send moonlight messages in the austere silence of silhouettes and shadows puppeteered by flashing fingers and flickering wicks. Dance with me in the musky autumn aroma of crackling, symphonic leaves and I will smash angels into frozen oceans and lay breathless beneath you and a blanket of snow. Together we will dodge the juxtaposition of an angry bonfire affection, and let the consonants bound ahead of us as we lay beneath oak trees and dream of laughter. Lie to me in stanzas of forgotten rhyme schemes and fill my ears with cotton and Dr. Seuss until the syllables of make-believe words contort themselves into definitions. Play me a harmony of grace-notes that last as long as a hummingbird’s heartbeat and drum me a cadence that filters up from the ground like dust-motes in sunlight. Allow me to lay 3/8ths of an inch from your embrace and feel the dove wing kiss of your pulse against my snow-cap knees. Permit me to take one last look at the collapsing stars above, to take in the startling brilliance of a beautiful thing that consumes itself, and I will be content to close my eyes forever and let you be my supernova. Allow me one more peek, one more snapshot of clairvoyance, and I will let your fingers tangle with my hair once more. I will let your ear rest upon my stereophonic heart and your hand to settle delicately on my concave waistline. I will permit your butterfly touch to read the Braille engraved in the crease of my elbow, and your quivering fingers to slide along the skin of my forearm, smooth as fiberglass. Chase me with arms wide open and a daunting smile on heavy-set lips. Fill me with sweet connotations and lullabies, and sweep the denotations from my grasp with gentle whispers and caresses. Allow me a glimpse of what is good, and true, and honest, and I will float forever without looking up and wondering why. Speak to me, dear, --together we will race to the ends of time, and find that nothing exists but the warm imprint left by two bodies in the dew grass.