betelgeuse
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the moon is always falling
like an old man
in a bad dream.
i wonder if the old man
would look for symbols
in a dream like that,
or if he would wake up,
remember where he is,
shrug and say well,
it was just gravity.

sometimes,
i am struck with thoughts
like what would it be like
to live in a sunspot,
and if you see your hometown
when you fall into a black hole.

they burn like dying stars
until they collapse and
explode
into blues and purples and
irons and cobalts.

i hope that the bursts
can be seen in someone
else's night sky, that they
watch the lights while
lying on top of a hill
in a forest clearing with
their boyfriend and thinking wow,
i can't believe how beautiful
everything is tonight,
and that we made it.

i am the small child
reaching out to
touch the roof of
the planetarium.

i like to think that the universe
always knows, that in trillions
of years when all the heat and
light are gone and there are
nothing but atoms flying past
each other forever, some other
people from another universe
will look at ours from the outside
like tourists observing a historic
monument from the confines of
a travel bus and one of them will
say as you can see from the movement
of the atoms in this corner here,
this place was once inhabited by a
poet, who thought a lot about
the moon and gravity and supernovae,
and the others will nod their heads
and think about the kind of life
i might have lived all those years ago.

my astronomy teacher
once told us that
betelgeuse
is going to die
very fast for a star.

i wonder if it wishes it could write poetry.

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