Desert Nights Cappy Love Hanson

2016 Creative Writing Celebration: Poetry, 1st Place

Dark drives its wedge deep between day and day, creaks night open like a wrought-iron hinge. Moon rounds the mountains late behind cloud-scribble, finds stars already scuffling for position, swaggering around Polaris.

Those first years, sitting out in plastic chairs amid the grass and creosote landed — as any two people with graves awaiting them — we felt starshine light on our cheeks like tiny celestial kisses. The sky’s slow spin polished our rough-edged days smooth.

But sit out here for enough decades, and stars begin to sting like nettles. Now the galaxy’s a gritty wheel that sandpapers flesh and bones and hearts back to their primal components: stardust to stardust.