The Last Words of a Meteorite

Artwork by Jenna Tse, staff artist

I. Soliloquy

My muse, you have flipped through my journals,

pages rustling like drying dreams, and left them all blank.

There are no secret inks or incidents on the tip

of my pen and tongue and paper left to say to you.

Every waking second, I dreamt of when I would be struck

Out of an inherent inertia

and

into

a

slow

fall.

Slow dancing with you, my stranger.

When I could hold my pen to my tongue write

My first words

of love.

I had been waiting my whole life to love someone like you. And so have you.

But in spilled ink and misplaced wishes, I could never separate love from the grief

Attached to it like a comet’s tail illuminated by the intensity of the sun.

From one hand on the trigger to another,

poems are confessions and love stories are apologies.

For all my conjecture, theories, and philosophies,

I understand nothing.

My love, what good has ever come out of being reckless?

None, I know. But, ghosts of bruises on my lips settle when you kiss them.

There’s fear coursing in my veins and hope in my arteries.

Our stories have been told before and have never ended well.

Countless continents have been scarred by the stumbling shooting stars.

You, my sun, insist that we’re different with the world reflected in your eyes.

Because you’re too far away to know the carnage you’ll cause on this earth.

I’m still dancing with you to the glittering tune playing deja vu.

My gravity, you know that I’m always afraid.

But I have crossed universes and sold my soul for a slow fall.

II. Reflection

The bathroom doors are locked. I wash my face, stalling.

Somehow I knew better when I was the little girl in the mirror,

She was the comet and I am the meteor. One a fallen fragment of the other.

In that past life, I didn’t know a thing but the hypotheticals of the inevitable.

I was fearing the sickening blow of fate, falling through empty space-

My reflection’s lips are bleeding.

The bruise, a sickening memory of futility.

My past life mouths, “Be brave.”

“I’m sorry. I tried.” I told her.

As if. Being the coward I am, I bought time until you came looking for me.

My muse, I suppose there were some things that I couldn’t say to you after all.

I strike a match between my fingers, a little sun in front of a little meteorite.

I can hear the last words of a meteorite ringing in my ears, gaining air pressure.

“Be brave.”

III. Epilogue

It didn’t end then.

A comet’s crossing didn’t end at the crash but continued.

A meteorite is christened when it survived

The fall.

Our stories have been told before and have never ended well.

But the everlasting song goes on and it didn’t end

When I loved you then: etching your name onto myself as the sun went down over summer.

When I love you now: clumsily weaving my fate into yours as our shadows look on.

When I’ll love you tomorrow.

Maybe by then, I’ll have learned what courage is. But, I’ll always keep learning.

My sun, when our paths cross, let me know if we ended up being different after all.

But, in another universe,

The comet continued through the perpetual darkness, untouched.

The meteoroid never died. The meteorite was never born.

Somewhere behind the blink of an eye and a blank page.