celestial bodies

the next solar eclipse visible in London will be on 29th March 2025,
and in eight minutes my flatmate’s alarm will go off,
so that i may listen to him make eggs beneath a rusted fan.
in 1997, my mother bathes me in the amber bathroom,
soap bubbles mixing with blessings i only know by sound,
while across the centuries
my ancestors are wrapping themselves in yearning,
shepherds offering up their flocks to the horror.

i want you and i to build a cardboard temple
and face down that upended moment, an eternity:
history means nothing if we can find each other.

what i am trying to tell you is that in
attempting to learn the name for heaven in every language
i have found myself unmoored from now,
stepping across time, each galaxy a lilypad.

a russian rabbi in moldova tells my great-great-grandfather
that when you are in the womb, just thirty days from birth,
your soul is cut in two, and i nod from the ceiling
as he explains that our spirits bleed
until we find our half-self, our soulmate.
we are all ripped peaches, the stone
a concrete scar from our divide.

if i told you that i looked for you in every era,
would it make a difference?
i have dripped with primordial oil,
numbered each constellation,
helped geese assault the sky at dusk.

when the moon eats the sun in their marriage rite,
people tell me the world is doomed as the air turns bloody,
but all i see is the ragged portal,
another chance to find you
clothed in starlight.

i was a soothsayer once, though that is yet to start,
and between the clouds, a wet plum in the sink, half-eaten,
hangs moronic, and i feel another shift begin:
i guess we’ll wait for one more year.

do you know
why the planet spins on its axis?
though gravity rebukes me,
i am pushing the world to get to you.