It was cool the night I stole away. My naked feet 

tiptoed over fissured asphalt, buzzing skin pressed 

between stolid cracks like how our living room 

illuminated the slumped hillside. Here, our house is

ablaze with mercury windows and humming generators and 

the time that brother slipped and splashed bright red paint 

across the doorstep. Here, the heartbeat is waning, 

drowned by the gentle rustle of craning pine needles. 

I am guided by the hair upon my legs – 

guided from uneven tarmac to moonlit grasslands to silted shores – 

guided until stupored vines outline inky carpets. 

I feel their breathlessness: stiff like the ripple of daylight hours, 

shimmering like the reflection in my pupils,

whispering as we unite. And now we wait.  

I watch as they float to the surface in pinpricks of effervescence 

that fizzle with the truth of a billion mile journey.

I follow as they train their glow upwards, pay recognition 

to forefathers that spit them into existence 

moon, after moon, after moon.