Sol

You named me for light. How we belong
in the little spaces carved for us, love

tucking us into a walnut shell hollow
where you’d take the tiniest brush and paint
a Christmas star along the concavity—

            Some days I’m a pendulum that exists on a planet
that periodically loses gravity. Some days

my light is spent, the light-years required
to travel back to myself too many.

Since you died I take tiny, redundant steps,
and, a, an. Articles on which I predicate
my survival.

I want to believe death is only a pause
in our continuous language. Stillness,

but what it means is cosmic change, that you and I
and the delicate spaces we drew into being

between us constitute a light source
that spears endlessly through a cloud-break

as hope lances inside
                 spherical borders.