The Astronomer

I told him one night when we were both drunk in my kitchen,

That when I was a little girl and I would have a particularly bad nightmare —  I wouldn’t yell out for my mom or leave my bed to find her.

Gathering myself up the best I could I would imagine in my mind a wand, that I would wave around my bedposts.

I knew that it wasn’t real but in those moments I believed in my own magic just enough to wrap it around me.

When my little brother would have a nightmare and he would come into my room with his pillow and blanket,

I would let him sleep on the floor — even though he snored.

The night before he was married I thought of this,

How not even a year before he had knocked on my door and slept in the twin bed across from mine after a nightmare — despite being well into our 20s. 

In the kitchen — when I told him about my magic wand, his brow furrowed and he looked lost for a moment.

I thought of how his mother would trail her finger from his hairline, down the bridge of his nose, over his lips and to his chin to calm him down as a child.

And then kissed just below the corner of his eye, on his cheekbone. The skin crinkling beneath my lips as he smiles. 

I felt a sense of pride. It made him smile every time. 

“That makes sense,” he says. “I’m drunk and I have more to say but I’ve lost it.”

I laugh and don’t need him to say anymore because in this moment 

he’s the little boy waiting on his front steps

And I’m the little girl waving a magic wand around her bedposts.

I know that no one is coming to save me.

But my ability to pull magic from the corners of my mind and cast some wider belief 

Has begun to fade. 

I’ve called into question everything from divinity, poetry and scientific theory.

Even pennies.

I am so desperate for change that I’m tripping over my feet looking for them,

Doubling back for things that turn out to be leaves or gum on the sidewalk. 

I laugh at myself because I know that this is not how it works — but even so I insist. 

Breaking and bending the rules, asking for a penny as a sign. Posing questions as to whether one will appear and plotting around it.

And thats how he found himself on my doorstep that night.

In the midst of it, when I cry out that something bad has happened

He’s that little boy again when he tells me “I know. I can tell.”

And after he tells me it’ll be okay and I give my answer he’s smiling softly saying, “I knew you were going to say that.”

I am forced to admit that I know less now than I knew years ago.

He’s standing before me and I can hardly breathe when I’m asking him to tell me that it won’t be forever,

And he assured me that he doesn’t think it will  — that it’ll be just like before but better.

And I wonder if he’s intentionally making reference to my poetry.

I have this wavering belief that he’ll always come back to me.

But now I’m struck with a persisting thought

What if he doubles back and it isn’t what he perceived.

I dont know what any of it means

But I do know that lately as I’ve stopped looking for pennies

The more readily they seem to appear right at my feet.