She said collapse, the word a world of the anti-luminous, a turning 
in on, as if the stars that hold enough matter to matter exploded 
across a failing galaxy. No more forests or ferns, vultures or elk,
 geode or opal. She said she wanted nothing more to do with 
psychics and seers, prognosticators and soothsayers, that our 
dimpled and wet planet was all she thought about, except for what 
she could put into her mouth that tasted of nectar.

She said incline. She meant something bent, leaning, another way
to land, a spotted towhee upon an extended branch. She said
incline and her lungs filled with audaciousness—what she meant
was we could walk a straight line and not end up where we mean
to go, though eventually gravity would lead us home. She laughed
at my straightforwardness, my toeing the line, and her body’s hum
roiled incantations—the sky whorled, and rain fell in uneven 
droplets.

But when she said eclipse there was a faltering as if nothing should
shadow the sun, as if that tiny profligate moon could dim her own 
light—the world’s brightness in a cheekbone. I had to sit by a tree;
 the sadness overtook me. Soon after, I lifted—there was no way to
contain her corona, that heavenly holy effulgence as it pulsed and
ached and moved through the space-time continuum—as if she
were meteor, as if she knew that one day she would fall to earth. 
And burn, sweetly.