POETRY
13
NAVY HUED NETHER PLANET
Ciara Cagemoe
I like to go walking at the creeping firefly edge of night my eyes soak up the heavy overhead paint-swatch ocean at dusk’s shore until blue irises rehydrate and the sky’s new lack of sea is the lonely color of coal-smeared longing, sparkling messenger airplanes shooting between distant star lovers they’ll never reach. Sometimes in the dark I forget that I exist not the solid 3D fuzzed and freckled “me,” but the fragile, precarious, air-conditioner-in-the-third-story-window scaffolding of “I” “I” becomes a letter now tendril, unfurled, reaching toward haloed orange bear-hug belonging, solid-squishy wavy-circular oozing-slimy belonging, belonging to the twin melodies of glowing neon cat gaze headlights and humming, nocturnally purple wind. As the last exhale of sleepy sunshine rolls over put-to-bed concrete the secret other world of night blooms dinner-plate-sized hibiscus open under the nonjudgmental care of the ever coy and smirking, caffeine-addicted moon crickets play the accordion in grassland alleyways for passing possum peddlers in dirty gloves and cars wander around this navy hued nether planet looking for connection, people too and some people are at home, alone and together and together alone, and some don’t even close the curtains. I walk through it all, still walk, walking into I wade I wade into the dark waters, shiver as the cold reaches my thighs deeper I splash, marvel, twirl in the pool of mystery possibilities breathing inside each shadow and dance to that strange written-with-the-left-hand song
