Lizzy Burnam 🐞

Vega, blink. 
A man in Kansas knows your name. 

You swaddled your sickness in each other’s shadow:
A little star and the soft neck exposed.
The crickets clicked and the neighbor’s dog barked
and the questions uncoiled from the center of your throat 
in a crooked blossom like the nightingale rose.

Vega, blink. 

Each sleep gets smaller as you go, 
even if the dreaming never leaves you. 

You’ll have short nights again, 
and long nights again, 
nights as long as the blue tail of a magpie. 
You’ll dance on the ashes of the martyred slaves of time. 
You’ll return to a city where the bars never close. 

Look, I’ll show you where that memory goes: 
On a gust of cold dark air 
toward any open eye in the northern hemisphere. 

Vega, blink. 

Someday, he’ll keep on his thumbs
instead of his toes.