cutting great neck

“who are you to say that we were born lovers into a vortex of love”—
this night a whirlpool that pulls us closer and closer,
like how planets are created
when shattered crumbs of debris kiss in the darkness,
the sun glowing far away in the far-flung center of things
like the red lamp that hangs from a wire over our booth at the diner tonight,
and somewhere between us, inside us, through us, dark matter
pinches open the universe and spews out
something blacker than itself.

you whisper something
so low
i can hear keys jangle in your pocket like stardust.
the truth is, you say,
the truth is, i’ve never really liked the sound
of your voice.

the truth is?
the truth is, i’ve never really liked the way the universe works in mysterious ways,
how it always expands as if it will never be born, as if it will never die;
the truth is?
the truth is, i’ve never really liked the way poems have skeletons,
the way words have biographies, letters even have them,
the way sleep is just a condensed death;
the truth is?
i’ve never really liked
anything but you, really,
now
that i think about it,
i confess over dead yellow whiskers and a charred wheel in a bun.

from now we’re standing on the edge of a cliff
and pretend it was a supernova
and that we burned in it like tragic heroes,
you with a hubris of salad
and me with words that wade down my throat
into the depths of my chest
and so sharp and mean like bones.

can you sing a requiem to a love that died?
if death feels worse than this,
i want to sleep forever,
become a star, welded gas and gold, fixed
in black empty space, beautiful space, still
perched in the sky millions of years even after i die.

you drove me home in the rain
and i watched the scars peel off the window.
i’m sorry, your hands said with each jerk of the wheel.
you drove me
home in the rain,
and i fell in love
with falling out of it.
now, i can only remember
the diner, the stars, the dust—
nothing more, nothing that deserves reliving.
you might disagree, but i think it is a happy ending.