It’s eleven at night on the eve of December
Around ten degrees and in the Middle of Nowhere, Maine
And because I am a completely rational,
completely sane person,
I step outside to get some air

Feeling exposed in in my corduroy jacket with the broken zipper,
I open the door and don’t slam it
because people are sleeping
Inhaling, I can pretend for a moment...
The porch light is on, and that makes it all possible

In the Middle of Nowhere, Maine
The stars are so dense that they look like clouds
Clusters of them, already burnt out
Already dead somewhere
But their legacy travels at light speed
Metamorphosing as a coal does into a diamond
and they shine

They are the bioluminescence of the ocean that is sky
Untouchably infinite, unreachably high
And I am a masochist, for as I sit here,
I gulp it down with fervor
This liquid form of isolation and lonely-as-heck
Yearning to feel something other than small

However, tonight is different because
The frost glazes the world,
lacing the rough edges
Stitching it back into the sky
As if that is where it belonged in the first place
And it has simply been ripped away.

Because it shines in the porch light,
And crunches under my mother’s borrowed boots and
oh my God,
I’m walking on sky!

I’m flying with the land-stars to suspend me and
It pulls on my insides and all of a sudden I want to weep,
But instead I breathe out a cloud of condensation;
a cluster of sundust
Becoming an extension of the ocean, if for a moment
A thread in the rippling silk of time
A star that is yet still burning, not yet visible
But would be missed even if there were no one to miss it


Through all of this, there is still loneliness,
Because no one else knows the secret of the porch light and the


importance of frost
And even later the feeling is fading,
Leaning back against my corduroy coat with the broken zipper
In our leather chair in the rotten air
Next to my once-was a cup of tea