“But all I ever learned from love/ Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya” -Leonard Cohen

I watched Venus drift across the evening sky, thinking of you &
not thinking of you. I had this feeling like
giving in and opening up all at once.
I don’t think we’re going to make it, all of us,
through this age we’ve made. Still, I
take care to jump over a frog, I 
take care to not take too many yellowwood blooms, I 
take care to get cardio
three times a week. Jupiter drifts, 
prettier, and I can pick out Vega, too.
I’m sure someone else has felt this,
a love where you know
you belong to it &
not the other way around. I’m happy,
running here by this creek
smelling the blossomspice, muttering silent
benedictions for the Anthropocene,
knowing you want me to touch you
at least once more. It felt as if 
all the love in the world was pooled up, like
a star had collapsed at the base of my rib cage &
I was just biding my time as you circle the edge,
waiting for you to fall into it, waiting
like you were a fly on the edge
of pitcher plant, 
no story left for either of us
but whether we outwit 
the other. But I don’t want you
for nectar bribes; I don’t want you
to drown at all. I run faster, then,
thinking of what it means to be something impossible
like a flower with no bee; could one become
something else, maybe, 
like a Vega or a Venus 
with no me?