bedouin stars

sing me to sleep, before i fall too far. tomorrow in her eyes, forever on her mind, bedouin stars in a bedouin sky; that’s all we’ll ever be. and what are we? well-situated dots on a badly-situated page, too little white paper to fill with all our thoughts.

 

there may be nothing left to say; i may have nothing here at all, nothing but the feeling that i cant get it all out. there may be nothing but illusion sun on the sidewalk, glittery pavement thinks its gold. all that glitters, i think i have a sidewalk complex. doomed forever to a mundane existence, all that glitters is not her. all that glitters in the sky, all that flutters in the wind, all that matters in the world is what she hopes one day to be. unmistakably precocious, we want everything there is, everything there will ever be, more than this universe has ever seen. more than god could ever know, more than the stars could have ever told it. we are all here, in this circle, further in the dark than we would like to believe.

 

but the shadows in our eyes cloud the future from us; even so-called gods have limits- cataracts in their celestial vision. in our orbits we see only one side at a time, one line of the rhyme, one constellation in the sky. the power moving in us is our uncertainty; a power born of mortality, of temporal value and the fear that one day we will cease. our worth is our fear, and fear begets our love. there is no love where there is no fear of loss; we are what we are because of what we fear to someday lose. fingers grasping at the sheets, footprints merging with the sea, close enough to touch me, too blind to ever see. we are the end of things, the edge of the trees, an unraveling thread.

 

see me touch me feel me we are human enough to breathe. like fishes do, in a sea of nitrogen and hydrogen and just enough oxygen, our gills open our closed eyelids to the patterns of the waves. singing girls in long-lost villages, wells long-dry after a drought.

 

what does an eyelash think of its purpose? what does an atom know of depth? caterpillars and butterflies, we are all in this conundrum. a puzzle of existence; pieces missing are what makes us who we are.

 

drop from a faucet, not quite turned off, just barely plinking in the kitchen sink we drink we think therefore we are. and what we are we are immeasurably, we are recklessly and desperately. one shot in a million, but we are what we have.

 

bedouin stars in a bedouin sky, she says. not all the veils in the world will hide our eyes now.