Novas

by Sarah Rosenthal

I.
Age seven, movie theater parking lot.
Hobe Sound, Florida.
I find my first constellation, a floating frown
in the sky.
Look up, Dad says, connect the dots,
form shoulders. Meet Orion.
 
II.
Age twenty-four, back porch,
Brewster, Massachusetts.
I am bad at finding constellations.
I am good at loving them.
Tequila-tainted, lonely,
skyway illiterate.
 
III.
He says he can be too much,
his belly too round, bank account too small,
still in love with a copper-haired comet.
Doesn’t realize he mapped his sky
wrong. The night starts at his smile,
arches south to his book collection,
spans east, towards finger brushes over whiskey.
 
IV.
Is it possible I mistook him for a
black hole
lined with coal dust sadness
from my corner of the map?
Let me marvel
everything
with naked eyes.
 
V.
My tiny lights murmuring,
rarely seen, segments ever-expanding.
At my zenith, he will know me by
the bend of a knee
just below the bar. Heading north,
he’ll connect the dots to a pair of eyelids,
glimmering.
 
VI.
You were never a sign you were
a starway,
universe without a mirror.
Or maybe I am your mapmaker
with a galaxy in my glass.
Either way, know that I am a nova.
I am not to be ignored.