i.

Step into the moonlight, beacon boys, the hour has come

for us to write. Leave those starless shadows at once; come

feel my pulse; the corners are no longer yours – dance,

and look into my eyes. Take some time, come sit by me.

Let us tease infinity: if we can dance the night away on

Saturn’s rings (two daring, flaring astronauts), will our

whispers echo in the chambers of the universe? I want

to be drowned out by Mars-Madonna, Pluto-P!nk. Tonight

I will refuse to think. We’ll sip coffee made of gold

dust turned confetti in our mouths, let us end the slumber

party with a solar-system-pillow-fight! We’ll rewrite Orion’s

dream in our incandescent neon ink. Now take me skinny-

dipping in this cosmic drink, or better yet, jive with me

along the galactical brink.

ii.

Let constellations slingshot our imagination into the

molten, cosmic core – make them quake, make them

want more. O’ loosen up my asteroid belt, throw me

on your Jovian bed; do away with swallowing

all the things we leave unsaid. I’ll craft for you a satellite

bouquet if only you’d agree to marry me tonight,

on this Milky Way! The moon shall be our witness,

the sun invited, too. We’ll have its rays for wedding

cake and gulp it down in two. Galaxies will clap abound

with ecstasy – it is not every day their choral voice

is raised to harmony. We will not ask the gods

for blessings (I’ve all that in you) so it remains

for us to simply yell the delicious I do!

I love you I do, adieu

iii.

Swirling in this clay teacup of spit and sand, we were

merely individual stars waiting to explode, to expand. We

become embryonic stardust, nebular, until the centre

calls us out of the darkness to coalesce again.  ∎

 

Words by Flavius Covaci.

Photography by Coco Cottam.