Innovation of the Same Name
5…
When you feel a hand squeezing
ice into your fingertips,
cold as those distant galaxies
you had always studied,
as a new star was being born,
what were you thinking?
Of a new adventure to be had,
a new toting carriage to behold
as she soars?
“Phoebus.”
“Phee, for short.”
When you looked upon her
for the very first time,
did she burn your eyes
with her potential?
Did she wrap her celestial
finger around yours
and,
just for a second,
thaw the frigidness of the
fear
you held in your heart?
Did she plump your sallow cheeks
with her warmth?
And when her feet first
dug into the grass,
when her fingers first graced the petals
of the bitter hyacinths,
closed in the spring air,
did she leave
blazes behind her?
Could she share common
tongues
with the distant galaxies you had studied?
Or did you mute her
with the ice in your soul
and extinguish her flame?
4…
She would play in the garage,
nuts and bolts and scrap metal
in her hands-
nothing but a heap of nothing
to autumnal onlookers.
But
her eyes shone with such a light,
the freckles on the backs of her hands winking.
One time,
her fragile fingers found the fragments,
not so fragmented in that certain light,
and fixed a mouse.
Its small nose nuzzled
her ankle
and
the sole of your shoe
crushed the innovation.
The garage doors were locked now.
No metal should be left.
Hers was a house of glass.
Now she feared her walls breaking,
a goldfish
who had once jumped
about in glee
now docile,
paranoid of the slightest bump
of its cage.
But she had something,
something the goldfish
could never have-
no, not a name
for that was
a prim ‘Alice’, now-
but a night sky.
Her tongue stumbled
now and then,
her stardust diction fallow.
But,
just but,
her hands could still reach
for the galaxies
you had studied.
3…
In her sophomore year
of high school,
her light was spent;
her hands were bandaged
from the burns she had
received from her
communication
with the impalpable things
in midnight velvet.
But for you,
oh for you,
she would wear high heels,
scuffed at the toes,
and went to prom
with a gaudy corsage
drowning her thin wrist
in its grandmotherly perfume.
And she went to coffee shop
slam poetry,
spitting sarcastically saccharine
verses about the day-
its encumbrances
turned to
gifts wrapped
in Arachne’s golden thread.
She would do this all for
frozen
you.
But she met a boy.
A boy named Apollo,
who routinely pushed up
his midnight velvet glasses
on his freckled nose.
and they talked
in the soft language of the stars
at three in the morning,
until
their under-eyes
appeared midnight velvet
as well.
She met him
and he showed her
his toolbox.
The two of them
spent every other hour
with chalk streaked chins
and paper
the color of midnight velvet
sprawled
vastly
in front of them.
She met Apollo
and he taught her to
break beer bottles
on quiet side streets,
giving her her first
set of stones to throw.
“Phoebus,
put your arm into it.”,
he would say while gripping
her thin shoulder roughly.
He had taught her to harness
her anger
and her light.
“It’s Phee,
to you.”
2…
She met him
and just like that,
Apollo was gone.
Like stars do-
one midnight velvet time,
he was gone.
Behind him,
he had left a path
of machine grease
and chalk residue
and small pouches of stardust.
He had
rolled her Chariot,
as they called it,
and placed it next
to her toolbox.
“No, don’t.”,
she giggled,
his ink-stained
fingertips
taking up a screw
with pure conviction.
“But I must,
M’lady.”
He scraped into
the thin aluminum:
HY-PHEE.
That ear-splitting sound
had become
her only comfort,
in the dullness of day.
His melted chocolate eyes
looked at her with fervor,
his pupils
constricting
with intent.
“Everything you need,
my Sun,
is here.
Let the stars
guide the way
and let the sun
not
but
rush you.
This Chariot shall carry you
to a place
where
you may
sit on the sliver of the moon
and rest
on the backs of
Aquila’s court.”
Apollo was gone.
1…
Did you see her?
That flaming star
in the middle of
the blinding day?
Did you recognize
your Phoebus
Under such heat?
Did you recognize her
beautiful artist’s hands
as they shook
with the Sun’s
and night fell?
Did you feel
your coldness slipping away
as if warm honey
had slid down your throat,
sweet
and
reassuring?
Did you see her
Chariot
as it soared across the sky?
She had reached
the galaxies
you had always studied,
sitting in the sliver
of the silver moon
as Lupus
taught her
of the constellation
she had been destined for.
She had touched the hyacinths.
She had left her blazes,
here on Earth.
And now,
leaving a cairn
beside her shattered window
where the midnight velvet
had always come in,
she was gone.
She had cast her stones
and left her fingerprints
in her wake.
Look at her now,
smiling
a smile
that is no doubt
brighter than the sun.