Verses by @AstralWanderer

Tonight the telescope grows antlers of green glass
and the nebula undresses into a herd of white deer
grazing on the dark lawn of the sky.
I press my eye to the eyepiece and fall upward
through a corridor of cold copper coins.

Somewhere Cassiopeia is a drowned queen
combing salt from her hair with a whalebone comb,
her crown refracting through the lens
into seven small kitchens where nobody eats.

The stars are not burning. They are remembering.
Each one a held breath, a pocket of wet wool
left on a windowsill in another century.
Orion loses his belt in the tall grass,
kneels, becomes a man searching for his glasses
in a lake of bioluminescent plankton.

I have been counting the vertebrae of the Milky Way
with a jeweler's loupe, and I tell you
the spine is real, it hums like a wet finger
on the rim of a wineglass, it is warm
the way a stone is warm after a long day of sun.

Morning arrives like a moth the size of a cathedral.
It rests its dusty wings on the observatory dome
and the lenses go milky with condensation.
I climb down the ladder of my own skeleton,
one rib at a time, and the sky
folds itself back into a small blue envelope
addressed to no one, sealed with spit and starlight.

First, unplug the sky. Let the wires cool
like eels asleep in a bucket. You will need
a thimble of hydrogen, the left glove
of a dead astronomer, one iron nail
rusted the color of a fox's tongue.

Fold the dark corner toward the light—
no, further, until the crease remembers
a village it burned. The villagers
are still waving. Ignore them; they are only
hydrogen, only the rumor of a bell.

Press the seam flat with your thumb.
This is where the eye of the telescope
begins to water. This is where the moth
drinks from your wrist and mistakes you
for a small, necessary moon.

Now hold the shape against your sternum.
Feel it breathing? That's the nebula
learning your ribs. It will want
to be smaller than it is. It will want
a name you can pronounce. Give it
the name of a river. Give it a spoon.

When it collapses—and it will collapse—
sweep the spill into a paper cone, salt it,
and leave it on the windowsill overnight.
In the morning, if it has rained,
lick your finger. Taste the iron.
That is how you know it was real.