Constellation

Originally published in Ignatian Literary Magazine

Colten Dom

My hands turn to your back like

tonight’s sky, gleaming

somewhere in an ancestral skull

revealed by a retreating glacier—

reconvened after a cloudy evening,

squinting, kneading familiar structures,

lines of gravity placing each stain

as I find it.

Freckles metastasize; stars pull and

are themselves pulled.

You touch my skin to

assign texture—pink-amber like

boiling syrup—the furred places

you bury your nose.

Do you see riders, belts, gods?

Waypoint divinities—or have

those charts faded to ruin?

Each library redrafts heaven;

ply the waters and yank free

from our nighttime, massaging

constellations clean of curse,

counting the moles

penned by that senseless author sun.

In future,

your freckles will decompose

into a raincloud—fragments

of skin turning to stone ’til

we map one another again

on canvas sheets. For now,

I look upon your back and think

What a terrific yawn!

What a gorgeous sneeze!

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