by Kathleen Langyher

 
 
Mimetic is impossible due to the pattern particles pick to float on the surface
Maybe it’s you in space- golden dust spectacle sprinkled atmosphere
Or it’s you under the space helmet floating forever through silence like that picture
Mom kept from Hollywood Studios 
Seaman born of clouds- clouds for bones bloated through the core
Maybe it’s you pushing the moon in circles forcing time between us
 
Pina dances like there is a hole in her stomach
I put my hand through it, through the clouds I touched your bones but the gold dust
scattered then settled again and I didn’t anticipate dust to be that frigid
I tried to reach again but the spaceman soared and curiously a gravestone was left
not in sky or sea but wet earth and we all know it didn’t match the curtains
Pina dances through the letters creating holes in space and I reached her hand
through and felt the ghost of the moon who left me suspended but not in space
because I haven’t earned a helmet for patrol so instead my feet levitate over wet dirt
and I think how Mom’s picture should have been pressed instead of the memorial
 
Mimetic is impossible but the words write themselves to stop the hole from
becoming my stomach
I don’t dance like Pina and I can’t cry enough
If the sky can cry maybe gold dust can too
I seem to forget what I’ve learned when I think of you but what is age to those who
are stunted
I’m making too much sense to exist
Sometimes Jack talks about living life could be a dream and dreams are waking
 
What if I am dead and not you what if I could die and you too what if I could die and
not you is there anyway I would recognize you on the street
Look out the light it permanently green but its fine no one really knows how fast
stars move
Sometimes I look up at the sky and think you can hear me
Your picture hangs on my wall at the foot of the bed not the one from Hollywood but
one a few years later and what I’m really trying to say if I can say anything mimetic
at all is that I miss you Mr. Spaceman
 
Twinkle safely and don’t worry about fuel because the type of hole in your stomach
dances on forever