Here's what you'll do if you know
what's good for you. Pick a star,
nothing fancy, a five-and-dime 
bit of glitter from a flyover galaxy.

Then weave the roses I like so much
into the indigo one or the other of us
calls sky (but never at the same time).

Here's what you'll do if you know
what's good for you. Wreath the star
(you've already forgotten which, I know)
also with scraps of worn leather from a
baseball you once cared about
(everyone's had one).

Add the few photographs that we
never bothered to take. Embroider
my name (if you remember it, on
any random Tuesday), and light it
all on fire. Astronomers will have
something to talk about (the sky!)
and as usual we will have nothing,
nothing at all, because you no 
longer remember the Parisienne
cupcake girl, her borrowed lace
and her bull-headed ways and
the words that made a sliver of
velvet vetiver sense at the time.
Candles dripped, stripped a room of
unpleasantries and logic. No one's
fault. You'd remember if you could
only remember.

Here's what I'll do if I know 
what's good for me: I'll turn my
back on the unlit fire overhead
that should have been. I'll leave it
to the astronomers to sort out the
funny detritus of the ringed star.
Space litter, breaking up and apart,
startling someone, somewhere
in a thousand years when rose petals
and fossilized cowhide float with dead
beetles and desperate frogs in a
too-blue pool.