They were very human, flinging sharp lines
in attempts to draw meaning from distant
bodies. I too am human, but I refuse

to draw the edges of myself in stars
when their compounds fill my lungs.

Too often I have felt the confusion
of common time connecting us to long-dead
reflections of burning gases, or great masses

much less green than the one I touch, the one
shielding me from the indifferent cosmos.

I knew a boy so obsessed with cosmic houses
he bled an art so heavy I thought its gravity
would cause him to implode right there

on stage. Instead, he cried so loud, yet
none of the houses heard him. In fact,

not a single cry even reached space.
See, his past ghosts orbited about his head
closer than any moon, any Gregorian date.

A girl once found the answer to her rage
in the elements of another world. Within

alchemical signs she sought the source
of undying flames that burned her with
earthly pain. Why, I found it funny how

fire elementals are no match for the stuff
of our tears, dissolving it all like sugar.

I feel the forces that pull us outward
but I know enough equals and opposites
without another Titan or other rock.

Jupiter was a fool for pulling Ganymede
into his sphere, and this was the model,

unfathomable heavenly bodies, their
movements telling our stories. Lines drawn
between stars mark our hopes and faults. There

the pull and push ends, for I have found
the lines I draw are between the space

of my ears, present as the mantle
of my heart-blood pumping and
grounded in one oval body.

---

Jamario Cantrell is a poet, traveler, and content creator. His work is concerned with the intersections of the human condition with powerful, yet fleeting experience. He has work featured in FEED, Maw, the Agapanthus Literary Collective, and forthcoming in the Jupiter Review. He currently lives in Port St. Lucie, FL. He’s at work on his first collection of poetry. He can be found on Twitter: @CantrellJamario.