song of the old vast night

i became the moon in your sky

just so i could follow you home again. it’s a story

that’s been told many times before, i’m sure. girl chases girl

chases girl chases girl, girl is moonlight, girl is record scratch

and slow dance, girl is ten feet too tall and has forgotten how to wake up.

girl becomes all things breathing in the dead of night

because we are rabid and we cannot sleep.

i’m sorry, we all say, as we prepare to go over this again. you’ve heard it before,

but i miss you, the way that boy in ’87

missed his dog after he ran away

and never stopped believing it would come back one summer afternoon.

i am sure tomorrow i will wake up and you will be outside my door

all roughed-up and the same, bone between your teeth,

soaked in the hot stench of august. and i will say come here, the smiths are playing

on the radio, and we’ve got a decade or two before the world goes to shit.

but the bed isn’t made and the lights are still on,

and i am still stagnant in the cold cold night

sitting outside your window

willing you to look up into this wide chasm

i have built out of my heart.

i have come all this way, baby. i have moved the oceans for you.

i swallowed up the stars

just for a chance that you might look upon me

the way you used to. like i birthed the world

within your bedroom. and the oceans sigh.

and the stars burn for all the faithless children

trying to believe in something. my baby goes to sleep

under the august sky. poor moon. full of universe

and troubled love. i believe in something. i believe

in tomorrow. i say it to the oceans. the waves crash

on the shore. the earth gone. the summer devoured.