At 4 AM, I Cracked My Head Open

As half my brain gushes out of my skull

As half my memories soak into the backseat

A silver moon pumps its blood into my eyes

Revealing infinite generations of stars

Dead, dying, and burning with full lungs

The infants have the highest lung capacity

Crying throughout the crowded daylight

Until they are finally coddled by crickets

Coloring the silence from camellia bushes

More camellias dot this town than I ever knew

And they appear before me as blushing nude bodies

Bathed in four AM blue and the last morning dew

Slowly dressing themselves dark in my pupils

I fear the dark with equal measures of my love

But as a toy in the bassinet of these infant stars

I realize that I am the child of the cloak of night

A part of its small details rather than a vagrant

So I slip into unconscious leaps through the cosmos

I see the cosmos in my mother’s tears

As her skirt is painted and her smile wavers

I see the cosmos in passing streetlights

Spotlights on roaming strays and insomniacs

I see the cosmos in windows

With light flickering against the panes

I see the cosmos in a nurse’s eyes

She smiles and says, “Welcome home.”