Back when I was lonely, fiery,
often I would stand
out on my small balcony,
crammed between pot-plants,
and I would question
the sky.
Stars would be there, and among them
Orion:
unflinching and austere,
the arch archer
meandering in spirals
through his frozen sparkling fields.
Now my nineteenth year
and I have learned about
things
and I have learned about
stars:
they die
you know.
Orion is dying.
It is a death so gradual
that it seems not death at all to us,
but for him, it is, I think,
a far more urgent sensation:
to be pried apart by cosmic tides
to be dissolved into
quietness.
Built by stars and by accident,
Orion now is made unmade by the same.
This is sad to know:
that there is something killing in the stars.
And now, my nineteenth year,
I think I must believe
a better thing:
that my archer’s being buried
slowly, gently, by stars and by accident;
that the constellations are
losing him,
remembering him
inside themselves;
that now and then Orion lifts his fiery eyes, unseen,
and asks the lonely sky what’s best to do.
If this can all prove true,
then Orion’s choice, what’s best to do,
becomes our own. We answer what he asks the sky.
Because
we are
Orion’s sky.