I want to be a girl with
constellations drawn on her shoulders.
Except they are buried deep within my mind,
behind black hole eyes.
Hiding the green and purple strands
of dancing milky ways
and nebulas
full of colored gas and stardust.

I want to be seen
as expansive as the universe.
Atoms constantly colliding,
small combustions creating planets.
The ones closest to my heart
are the least inhabitable,
and none have quite the right atmosphere
for you to make your home.

I want to be intoxicating
but my gravity is a paradox;
pulling you in,
pushing you away.
My body doesn’t orbit gracefully.
It hits walls
and bathroom floors
in a continuous cycle of nonsense.

I want to be music to your ears
but I am the interstellar noise
produced by oscillating plasma;
a warning like creaking wood in a horror film.
I am the horrifying noise
of a completely noiseless place.
There is no music here,
only a deafening silence.

I want to float among the stars.
I want to feed into their light,
instead I absorb it.
I was beyond the stars,
much farther into the depths.
My eyes are not radiating suns,
but bottomless black pits.
I am not your Northern Lights.

I want to give you substance,
but the ground gives way under those near me.
The solar winds blew you away.
I fed on your stardust
until your brightness fell away.
The white of your eyes was red,
filled with the cosmos and whiskey.
Mine were still those black holes.

I want to be enough for you,
but you decided it was all too much.
You never understood how my head
was high above the clouds,
how my body turned without gravity,
how the Big Dipper made an appearance
on my thighs,
and the Southern Cross was firm on my tongue.

I want to move in sync with the rotation of Earth.
I measure the time I have been alive
by each mile I have traveled:
598,268,445 seconds, 2,230,482,364,702 miles.
It surprised you that
after all those years and all that distance,
I was still made dizzy
by the spin.

I told you once that Orion was my favorite constellation.
You never asked me why.
It is because
the freckles on my back form his belt,
no planet can survive long enough
to call his body home,
he will live after one thousand generations die,
and you will always see him, no matter how many trains away.

I wanted to be a girl with constellations drawn on her shoulders.
I wanted to be expansive and intoxicating.
I wanted to be music floating to your ears.
I wanted to give you substance.
I wanted to be enough.
But I will settle for Orion who will never leave my side
when my black hole eyes collapse
and I am on the bathroom floor.