One Hundred Moving Parts of Love  •  poems by lenny dellarocca

Astronomy’s Music Lesson

There’s a place on your back where once there was a 
second wing, where my hand slides
up the curve of your spine,
rests on a shoulder blade,
and I kiss it.
It smells like Vick’s and Vera Wang.
The other night I left a note on your Jeep:
Where are you, love?
Rain laughed at it.
And now your eyes say that when you fell, 
hard and fucked-up into
nightclubs and straight jackets, you just
wiped your mouth.
Clouds burned you a scar so fierce
you couldn’t stop touching yourself. 
It’s why you keep me in minor keys, where
I can only warm the half of you
that won’t break.
The other half is ice on a red vase in moonlight.
How did you jar such a faraway tune?
Am I your freak
addiction? Capo for your
banged-up guitar?
Goddamn it. You burn
with someone else’s name
on your neck,
music from around the block.
Evenings when the sun
takes your hair
in spangled blaze,
I hear singing
at the deep end of your room.
A song about high places.
When I touch your fear of heights
I feel that phantom
wing, torn, hacked off your back.
My love, the hole it left is just the sky at night.

 
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