Bright Boy

Me,

A star’s last tantrum,

soot,

then drift, then nothing-with-credentials,

then a dip in gravity, until entropy shallows

hands me a skull

with a will

to call myself a trauma throne.

~

You,

light,

you arrive like you’re early.

Like you too didn’t come

from a corpse.

Like the star you fled

didn’t die screaming in spectra.

You spill across the void

with that smug, clean confidence

only a law can afford.

~

You don’t matter

and I, stupid little piece of matter

I, don’t matter either.

~

I hold you up to my face

like a receipt,

like proof someone, somewhere

signed for me.

~

You answer the only way you know:

straight-line fetish

in a universe of curves,

then bending where I can’t see

until the galaxy around

rats you out.

~

Bright boy.

You love an illusion

as long as it obeys.

Your halo trick—

the one you do with gravity—

old fires dragged close,

the far made intimate,

distance dressed up as arrival.

I do it too, only slower.

I lens the past around pain,

pull far-ago into my mouth

until it tastes like now.

Memory... survival... or call it whatever.

~

You don’t “reach” me.

You collide.

You transfer.

And you do it loud and rude.

Afterimage. Residue. Radiation.

A harsh burn on the retina

that makes me think

I was touched

with purpose.

~

Neutrinos have manners.

They ghost the whole universe

and don’t perform.

No shimmer.

No sermon.

Just quiet passage

through everything I am

without asking for worship.

You should learn that, too, you know

(and me as well, without doubt):

you don’t matter

and I, stupid little piece of matter

I, don’t matter either.

~

Until: concrete.

Before dawn.

Outside a clinic.

Air tasting like old rain and disinfectant.

Phone in my hand like a detonator.

Carpark a black ocean.

Thoughts like sharks.

Heart punching time

like it could bargain.

~

Then you arrive.

Just on schedule.

A thin blade over the horizon,

catching a stranger’s windscreen,

setting one bead of water on fire

so clean it looks divine.

And

my shaking hands, too,

lit for a petty, physical second,

like poetry

present enough

to remember.

~

No choir.

No moral—and of course—no manners.

Just definition.

The world briefly legible

so I could choose it again, over...

(no.)

~

So here’s my pact, bright boy:

I won’t crown you.

I won’t kneel.

I won’t pretend your timing

means I’m chosen.

~

You just do what you do.

I just do what I do.

Two accidents in the same dark,

one moving at c,

one moving at regret,

both temporary,

both real.

~

I’ll take what you spill

and refuse the halo,

like you don’t matter

and I, stupid little piece of matter

I, don’t matter either.

.