Speaking of lemonade, though?

you come back mended in three different places. you want to totter around and instead, you won’t shut up!

you come back quoting Edmund in King Lear: “The wheel is come full circle: I am here.”

no, wait—

you are misquoting Margaret Atwood, but only because you have shifted / are shifting / will shift the tense: We are the people who are not in the papers. we live in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. We live in the gaps between stories. your collaborator raises his heart at you via one of his eyebrows, like a toast. he likes the tense (so do you). your colluder, co-defector. stunt-double muse for when yours is on the fritz. together, you feel, you could climb up the details of the poem, any poem, whistle-spit from the top, sing your hearts out. whoops! there they go, flying.

you are quoting jack keroac from On The Road: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn. . . but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

curious to invent a more inventive escape, the doppelganger muse raises his heart up through a balloon of charm and bright ideas, our island dashing safely to sea. when life give you lemons! you sing into the night, your tongues puckering.

“you ought to listen, Lemonade,” he says. no, you think, he doesn’t say that. he would have sat down down softly, swearing something in another language. Mon Dieu! i’d frown. gulp down the last of the poem’s elixer, twinkling in the light like a lunar eye, like the first struck line ringing, the strings in the orchestra pit of your two dim hearts warming up, their discordant harmony and flittering bells. voices from the delicious mystery of the wings.

“open me first,” you want him to say. “okay,” you say. “me second!” (so agreeable!)

when you open him first, everything is new. his imagination’s windsheild wiping its cheeks down the misty road through a towering evergreen glen, cheeking some runaway love dry. you fall in with forgetting to weep. you flat out forgot! because the flimsy sorrows! the minted wisps! your pencil-sharp wit, its glimmering strings!

he opens you second, and his eyes narrow in a delicate concern that whisks and coalesces right into affection, like dust motes swirled on a light beam and arranging themselves into a postcard (miss you! wish you were here!), a love letter. it melts shyly on his cheeks to a pinkish glow, that blush of wonder.

“these mendings,” he breathes, like he may break it all again by breathing. careful! “but how?”

from inside, you don’t say. you have your eye on the thread of a fault line instead, it’s right over there, but you’re over here, you’re watching him shimmer it closer.

Star in the Margin is free and open to all, but does require lots of time, love, and energy! If you’re into the vibe and want to cheer me on. . .

Buy me a coffee! ☺️