When the Stars Come Out a Billion Miles Away

by Arthur Sadrian

It was cool the night I stole away. My naked feet 
    tiptoed over fissured asphalt, buzzing skin pressed 
 
between stolid cracks like how our living room 
    illuminated the slumped hillside. Here, our house is
 
ablaze with mercury windows and humming generators and 
    the time that brother slipped and splashed bright red paint 
 
across the doorstep. Here, the heartbeat is waning, 
    drowned by the gentle rustle of craning pine needles. 
 
I am guided by the hair upon my legs – 
    guided from uneven tarmac to moonlit grasslands to silted shores – 
 
guided until stupored vines outline inky carpets. 
    I feel their breathlessness: stiff like the ripple of daylight hours, 
 
shimmering like the reflection in my pupils,
    whispering as we unite. And now we wait.  
 
I watch as they float to the surface in pinpricks of effervescence 
    that fizzle with the truth of a billion mile journey.
 
I follow as they train their glow upwards, pay recognition 
    to forefathers that spit them into existence 
 
moon, after moon, after moon.