dust to dust, by melanie dalby

they say we’re made of old stars.

they say all the elements of the universe repeat themselves in you and in me.

the iron fillings in my blood that were once shards of supernovas are drawn to you like you’re polarized

pulling a haze of life up underneath the blanket of my skin

i commit to a blush that I cannot hide

an assault the hue of baby’s breath and roses

of sunsets and sunrises

of a spot at the edge of the world I’ve never been to but the carbon in my bones remembers.

i shake with the fire of nebulas.

please look at me

please look at me

please look at me

i’m hiding galaxies beneath my breastbone and stars beneath my tongue

lightyears separate your bones and mine

even when we’re too close to breathe apart.

the air in our lungs forms auroras in the frost.

i tap constellations

old new and invented

into the void of your back

i swirl nebulas into being

from the stardust I trail

like ink in my fingertips

i am painting the milky way from long forgotten memories on your skin in luminous

strokes, a map to call our forgotten elements back from their long journeys across solar systems.

i dip my hands into the clouds where stars are formed and cup promises in my hand that shine with light already a million years old. i tip my palms over your head. star light with the weight of angel feathers. trailing down your neck, the sifted silver sounds like the tail of a comet heard in the delicate curve of a shell. it is enough to smother our whispers in velvet. the ruffles in your hair are like canyons, running wild with comet dust that makes you cold to the touch.

i am filling you up with beauty.

beauty you forgot you had, have, will have

across all the eons your particles have traveled.

Millenia from now, the earth will remember the swirl our bodies make, a supernova burning its way through to my core that wind will trace like scars in the sagebrush.

(in my quietest moments I miss you like a black hole.)

The hooks I carved for you in my palms will remember your gravity in indelible ink we bled from the crescent moon when it had no more to give.

Our bodies were once the same star. My atoms will find yours again, if you want it.

If you want it.

(i am drawn to you like a moth to an abyss,

facing down inevitability from a boat made of all the first stars we ever wished upon. )

we are a compass pointing further North than dreams can find.

Cassiopeia, Orion, Ursa Major and Canis Minor find their way home through us

a Polaris rooted to the strength of the earth.

the constellations are drawn to your eyes.

i gather them close like daisies from a meadow, like all the words I save for you tucked inside my cheek, like bodies gather stardust.

i only end up pulling you closer.

one for sorrow, by melanie dalby

i watched a movie that was quiet in the way you bite your lip when there’s nothing left to say melancholy in the way the world feels when it rains and everything sounds like the hiss of water, even the cars and eerily, eerily familiar like a book you’ve read a long time ago but forgotten about but something about it sticks in the back of your brain not like a rock in your shoe but like an old ache that comes knocking when it’s cold out. sometimes i realize i haven’t spoken for a whole day and i’ll look myself in the eye and say something, anything, it’s not important what it is but it’s important that i’ve said it. that’s what this movie felt like. it was about a boy, and a girl, and a ghost who was a boy who nobody loved. it was about words and about belonging and about time marching on. you think, the whole time, the boy was murdered you think that his bullies finally got the best of him you think that the boy- the other boy, the alive boy, the brilliant and bright living boy- is going to help him but he doesn’t and he can’t the problems of the dead are not for him. you find out that the girl the girl who found the boy- the ghost boy, the dead boy, the lost and lonely unloved boy- took the letter that she found in the hand of the body of the dead boy and she hid it. the letter listed things i’d like to kill and ended with the word myself. there is a tunnel, in the movie, in the woods. a dark and long and mysterious tunnel. you find out that the ghost boy is scared because he doesn’t want to leave alone the same way he lived and the same way he died. he doesn’t want to do it alone. you find out that he doesn’t have to. at the end, you watch the girl drive the boys to the tunnel you watch the boys walk hand in hand to the dark, gaping, silent mouth the boy and the ghost hug and it is significant because fifteen minutes ago the point was you couldn’t tell the difference between who was alive and who was the dead man walking. love shines in the awful way it does, at the end of all things, and the boy alive watches the boy who died walk away, and away, and away into the dark and out of sight. he doesn’t turn away until it’s all over. the movie felt familiar to me because at the end while the credits played over a screen as black as that tunnel, i wondered who walked my friend to the end?

Are We Alone? or Ponderings of a Five Year Old by Ken Rudnick As we sat on the porch, radioactive flies neon bursting, wood huffing, heaving, and creaking as crowded crickets cry at the onyx sky, my son and I watch blinking eyes that spy on us far above.

Kyle turns, and looks up to me. His feet dancing, dangling above loose floorboards while we bench rock back and forth. “Dad, are we alone?” drips from his wrinkled nose, his wipes back, his eyes glued to macaroni pattern stars.

Where did that come from? My first thought. Maybe it’s that private school education at least he’s learning, mom will be happy.

“Mom told me she didn’t know”

I’ve gotta think of something, show him dad is cooler than mom.

But how do I answer. I don’t know.

Binary stars tend to swallow, suck star juice through a squiggly straw, hydrogen and helium life blood, to feed explosive thoughts.

Or.

What was it? Once I learned, spaghetti lines tell what ingredients make up stars. And planets orbiting stars must be in the gold-i-locks zone Could life steam from hot pasta in a strainer.

And what about the dapper effect. Was it blue or red that looked classier.

To approximate life, probability is getting a six in one thousand one-sided dice, one weighted die. There’s one billion planets in the milky way.

Like the cereal box, chance of getting a prize.

Milk-stained surprise, cheap plastic ring. Not unlike your mom’s howls about hers. Can’t say that.

Are we alone? Does it matter? Others living on asteroids, spiraling, clashing, smashing echoes nothing. Silent film strip, listening to his own breath.

There’s a man on mars, rusting away, is he alone? Silicon pistons keeps him company. Rover battery red.

Standing on the moon, looking at blue-white marble speckled with dirt. One jump up, trying to spot anyone, anything. Tasting compressed air, carbonized breaths, dry as an airplane luggage compartment. Glowing webs come out, night and day for the one who stands between. A dot of the ash and dust, graphite grey sprinkled on his ice cream hand. No one to share his sundae. On his bouncy ball, until he jumps to high he falls up.

A stewardess walks the plank, near the speed of sound. In a tight tube, full of warm bodies she comes at the ring of a chair, whenever she’s called. But who answers her calls.

A man and his wife are in a cave just above sky level. Clouds bow to them, the wind prays. All she wants is a picture. They smile, together. She goes to put the phone away. She won’t come back. She found a good wifi spot.

A family at disneyland, dances with the princess. Then they split, dad gets Pirates booty in the Caribbean, mom takes the kids and the haunted mansion. Kids don’t care, they’re busy texting.

They all leave empty inside. In a twirling, tinkering tea-cup flapping dragonfly wings to stay up, she looks down on pompous weather balloons.

Playing her pipette like a trumpet, I wonder if she sings.

One submarine port hole, she watches from her fish tank. I hope she’s fed well.

My best friend and his fam, dinner and tv, avoiding the sounds of their real sitcom, for a reel sitcom. They disperse to their rooms, close the blinds so stars can’t peak in. They message people with anti-pandora boxes that hold their lives.

Every date I’ve ever had, looking at stars in a telescope, but wishing to look at her stars. She leaves and doesn’t call again.

I’m driving you back to your mom’s tomorrow. We’ll share a black widow glare, breath in the webs, spit out air.

Like a neutron star, it’s quick. Our highly magnetic poles blast radioactive energy from decaying particles that once gave rise to life.

If there were men and women dancing on the hot tar of every star, people populating planets all over the place, other beings hiding behind dark matter and crab claw supernova remnants, I’d sit on my porch alone. Except I’ve got you next to me. “For every star born, there’s hope...” Wind blows, grass bows, Kyle turns to me. “Well my teacher said that there’s this formula--

Bite The Dust -- Ken Rudnick

Painstaking, like a thousand stakes scratchingand screaming on window panes.Paintbrush of petrified wood and whisper-thin whiskers

brush away the golden dust painted-desert floor.Prayer position, on our calloused hands and khaki knees

we uncover predator and prey. We munch and crunch sand, grinding our teeth;we grab the dental picks, mini-claws to wedge dirt fromcalcium deposit illium, sacrum, pelvis. The day beats down, medium-well skin, grease drips from eyebrows and behind ears. Heat splashes my face, dripping down my spine,waterfalls roll off cervical vertibrae, thoracic, and 24 ribs. trickling down my pants, squeezing my t-shirt off, gluing mud and dust to my chest, sternum. Everything tastes a little green, a little blue, but only lightly pressing on my occipital skull -bright like the sky, clouds scurry in opposite directions,but still I have bed-head. I start to drip into thought, my canteen sour with aluminum like a dull yellow-orange juice. The pool swirls in waveswarm, wrinkly air, kicking up ash and dust. I’m dry drowning, choking, coughing, screaming, kicking, shovels rust.Thoughts dipped in oil, sapping energy, zapping bee stings from the crust that dries my skin. Throat rough, tongue numb and sharp as broken fibula - razor thin.

Cracking lips, like chips off a mandible.I stumble over my phalanges,

tripping, ripping metatarsals, hitting my achille’s calcaneus.

I fall frontal first,bash the perietal.

The fossil forever frozen in stone,as the desert consumes my bones.