I saw Andromeda as the sky ripened.
Stood far from the pivots of light. For years
my body stretched and thinned in anticipation

of something I wanted to be given. A constant
skirl, a perfection. But maybe
it’s the other way around: the lack from outside and me thick

within it. It doesn’t mean anything, what exists.

Life is some feathers, some love, every worn gasket—
it can all be chased away.
If you cannot remember this,

take heart. Outside will again whittle
stars from the gushing dark as though picking them
clean out of a plan that never was absence.