Dark Matter

In another universe you say you love me, a declaration 
to the remnants of stars. Does love exist if no one is 
around to hear it fall? 

It reaches me centuries ago or eons later, dark matter 
compressed into a beam of moonlight, a deceptive 
portal hitting the pavement. 

I try different strategies. 

Attempt to swallow it up, think the hole in my chest large 
enough to fit entire planets, but fear losing myself
in the remaining darkness. 

I step right through it, determined to get every constellation 
bending to my will, but the light feels so serene my
body rejects it as foreign and stifling. 

One day I think to bottle it up, spend hours gathering moondust 
into jam jars but then shatter them all when I miss the
waiting for the night to fall. 

I stop. Stand by until your next sign. 

And I suppose you must be raging up a storm over there 
just to have me shivering with the force of it, starting a 
tsunami so that the rain patters 

on my rooftop like a love letter, burning down forests to get 
me feeling the warmth of you on my skin, the closest 
we could ever come to touch. 

Some days I think I can almost grasp it, a shadow dancing with 
mine on the sidewalk, an indent left on a sun-kissed pillow, a 
tear-stained page of a book. 

That all I need to do is turn at just the right moment to tear 
through the veil, see through some invisible wall, follow 
the distant beating of a heart. 

Eventually your inexistence is enough of an existence to 
extinguish any hope for reality to prosper. 

And I think I’ll take insanity over a loveless life, I’ll take wasting 
away days to count the minutes to moonlight, read the 
creek of the second step on the 

staircase as I’m here, the sudden breeze through the 
window as you’re mine. 

I’ll learn to live with the ghost of you, succumb to the madness if it 
means I get to believe that somewhere across the galaxies 
you’re keeping my heart safe, feeding it little bits of desire.