whatever it takes to drown out the noise, dove

[rembrandt]

you and i nursing on a poison that never stung our teeth and lungs are lined with the scum of it She says his name as if it was made to fit the shape of her mouth. Though he is not a romantic, he cannot deny the magic in the peaks and the valleys when she says it. Like it has some new, deeper meaning. Like it is something worth saying at all. And he has never thought himself nothing but he knows, too, that there is nothing overtly special about him. He has nebulas on his skin, stars caught between his teeth, but these things are not spectacular. Not even the shape he takes sometimes when he’s tired and powerless to stop the stirring of all that energy in his gut is all that unique. But when she says his name it’s bellsong and he smiles a secret kind of thing. It always stops, she says, and he knows that she’s right. Nothing is infinite, not even the stars. Because he’s learned that sometimes they burn out and it takes thousands of years for them to know. Still, the smile remains. A quiet, knowing thing. “I hope that, too,” he says and turns his gaze back up to the sky. There is magic in this, too. The insulated quiet. The way the snowflakes writhe overhead before plummeting to earth. The way they stick on her eyelashes. Long. And beautiful. He watches her for a long moment, openly. Unabashed. He feels no shame as he studies her. He could ask her where she’s from. He could ask what brought her here. If she has any siblings, what they’re like. Who her parents are. Instead, he reaches out and he touches her shoulder and asks, “what were you thinking about?” He asks it quiet, as if it is a secret shared between them. “When I interrupted you, what were you thinking about, Dove?” stardusted son of despair and astral