is burning down where you guided me one night beneath the canopy of maples and spruces on a study break dare. The popular one and the loner. You remove my glasses to enhance the blackness. All friendship, no faces. We climb over the bridge-closed sign. Holding the oak girder, I clomp surprised onto dilapidated deck planks. We feel our way, scale the crisscross white-painted truss in a spotlight of moonglow.
converse with the September canyon creek below— You interrupt— Have you ever seen a falling star? I laugh at the absurdity. Come on. You lead me through an endless tunnel of thick-barked boughs into what you swear would be a clearing in the daybreak. Thinning tree crowns eclipse the moon. Your hands eclipse my eyes, no peeking. Then you unveil— oh! a myriad sky of placid fireflies at rest
is our Van Gogh viaduct to the infinite, once camouflaged by distant city lights. Under October leaves the colors of flames, all eyes skyward. Still, I weigh this presence against what’s hidden in our well-lit lives: our friends starving students, your research funding ending, spending too much time in the coffee shop where I straighten consignment paintings and wipe counters looking for new customers. Over your shoulder, white-hot, a cinder diving from nowhere into superstition.
reveal the Northern Lights in November that dim the starscape. You say, I love you, but this was never that. I return alone, to confirm the aurora. For a moment, everything is discernible: I was never alone. Not there in the clearing, nor here babbling by the old bridge. Burning, disassembling the latticework. Choking the stars. And you are not here to console me. Through the smoke, I see you through the smoke on the other ledge, flickering incandescent. Tossing down the matches. Walking away.
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