Cry of the Stars

The girl of your dreams
is a hijacked fragment of a person,
flat as a rice screen
and blinding as a hasty sunrise.

You close your eyes and access
the interface: she plays guitar
and holds your hand and lets you run
your fingers through her hair,
but you have forgotten
what her voice should sound like.

define VocalQuality windchimes \\\ ? no
class->. strings(instrument)
          1. {cello};
          2. {harp_
          3. flute? ERROR

She has glasses and wears them sometimes.
She writes songs and sings them herself.
She flickers—flicks through pages—
a library heart of your favorites:
War and Peace, The Great
Gatsby, The Little Prince, and

her thoughtful eyes are clear blue as oceans
but that’s not right.

display[] EyeColor = {
          “cherry wood”, “Potter’s clay”, “cherry wood”
          “hazelnut”, “new moon”, “hazelnut”
          “cherry wood”, “Potter’s clay”, “cherry wood”
          } \\\ ?? unsure
>> ERROR unexpected symmetry

“I shouldn’t have you here
at all,” you say, while slow-dancing.
For response, left hand
burning through your shoulder,
her brow creases in an elegant curve—
you remembered that one
perfectly—and you think, you
could weep right now.

function wit = intelligence(conversation)
          define Vocabulary = [lexicon];
          processing = Vocabulary(conversation)^personality;
          wit = Vocabulary(processing);
end
>> ERROR undefined parameter "personality"

She smooths a thousand wrinkles
from her ricepaper skirt,
and shrugs a crimson cardigan
over the orange blouse you last
saw her wearing.
"Darling," she buzzes, "it's time
to leave."

\\\ this language 
doesn’t exist

You should go
You should

>> end … ERROR
>> end … ERROR

I had peeked into your heart
and found the most curious hole
in plain, familiar outlines.

What could those long fissures mean,
I'd thought, if not my own
arms and legs—or those ten splayed gaps,
if not my outstretched fingers?

(You don't realize until you lie down,
how great an organ the heart is,
and how gigantic a cavity
your minuscule skeleton can't hope
to brace itself into—)

While falling, I looked up and saw
that the silhouette was still the same,
though somehow infinite,
an enormous void in your dark sky
waiting for the dawn's explosion, for

the arrival of morning fire and
its human-shaped sun.
You'd have lost yourself in me too,

just something we do:
shadows in the night unaware
of our own translucence,

of what it costs to leap, or
what it means to find ourselves
drowning, inert fixtures

dangling in each other's
stagnant blood. Waiting for the
surgeon hands and outstretched arms of
a human-shaped son.