March 4, 2025

stargazing with Celeste

We forgot, in the happy throes of reunion, to go outside.
Instead, fried chicken and table tennis, lowballs of Bees’ Knees
made with local gin and honey and sweet Meyers from further south.

There was so much to talk about—it had been how many years,
we kept asking out loud, poking into the air with greasy fingers—
and the do-you-remembers and can-you-believes and isn’t-
it-crazy-hows as night slid its body into the bed of a Decatur skyline.

We blazed on, elbows loose on the table, napkins
crumpled across the floor, time—we thought—elastic, edgeless.
slow as the beads of water crawling down our glasses.

The weekend passed too quickly. We ate too much,
got hardly any sun. On my flight back home, I sunk
into the pocket of a window seat, the brightness of Atlanta
receding. The plane was full and loud, and Newark,
when I got there, did not throw its arms out in welcome.

It's only now, more than a decade later, that I am looking up,
and the sky is so dark I could be anywhere—and Celeste
is on her way in the red truck, cold chicken in the cooler,
headlights bright as new stars.