I would prefer a different night sky from where I sit. more terror & less eager to be perceived. I would prefer not to have the velocity of my yearning hitched to lamps flickering along the boundless hem of a dark dress, but here I am. I miss you in decades & I miss you in minutes. I miss you in miles & the inches of a moth’s wing. I pulled the black Earth Crisis shirt you left behind from the back of my closet & it was riddled with small holes. cruel & punishing galaxy. the trick is that you leave once, but the taking never stops. an astronaut told me the moment he departed earth’s atmosphere he understood how fragile he was. he told me I realized the heart does not require us as much as we require it which I took to mean without the arrogance afforded to us by gravity, we are useless planets sustained by unpredictable mercies. choir directors, shouting over singers with their backs turned, singing the song you didn’t ask for. a group of moths is called an eclipse & there’s the terror I was after. even light gets an eviction notice. even memory has a landlord. our sorrow isn’t special & neither are our saviors. your mother told us that if we closed our eyes & pressed hard enough, we would see stars everywhere.