No Souls Will Burn in the Sky Tonight

by Briane Pagel

When you see stars, you see…

History?

No, that’s not right.

Energy?

No, that’s not right, either.

Giant balls of plasma forging in their hearts elements that make up everything, spitting them out into cold dead space hoping that someday they will find another another and become…

Closer, but let’s tone it down.

Let’s look instead at something real.

When you see the street below, you see…

A dim haze of people who all have some place to go.

And you have no place to go.

And you have no place, too? Go.

Go away from the rail.  Go away from the edge. Go away to the door.  Spring to the door, swing it open, sling yourself into the stairwell, taking the stairs two two at a time, flying, almost, almost flying, down down your hurdler’s stride, like the stairs are years off your life which of course they are not.

You always liked the hurdles.

Because it was a metaphor not because I was good at it

It felt when you were going over them you were accomplishing something.

The lobby, burst burst across, slowing for the revolving door but not too much

A swinging door here, a door that would not momentarily freeze the action, would’ve been better.

No, it’s good: we see you straining, see the brass bar and airtight seal of the entryway slowing you against your will.

Like a metaphor.

Ah, metaphor as simile!

Other runs, sprints: headlong down the orchard’s grassy hill. To the waiting cab 40 minutes before the wedding (20 minutes later than it should have been).

The choir concert.

That was a fall.

Then the time at 2 a.m. as the ambulance was loaded. Let’s not mention it.

We just did.

Time moves again. Rush out. Grab her.

It does not matter who. You simply need an anchor.

Grab! Her!

You tell her.

You: tell! Her!

Tell her

This is what I should have done.

And hold her like you are afraid of falling into the sky to be sucked into the stars and reassembled as someone else, but also afraid that you will not do that, too.