It’s 23 degrees and the “stars” of Gemini are falling,
a beach blanket shields us from the moist grass,
I nudge myself to sit between your legs so your warmth can engulf me,
your arms secured firmly around my stomach.
I explain that “shooting stars” aren’t really stars
at all, but remains of comets stuck in orbit that crossed ours
and is burning in our atmosphere,
you snicker, “Lame,” warming my ear with your hot breath
and it reminds me of last August,

at my pool when I bobbed up gasping
and you popped up 30 some seconds later
and sneered, “You’re outta shape.”
And I replied, “You’re a wh-re.” Splashing you.
“Your mom’s a wh-re.”
“Your dad!”
“Your cat!”

You shift your hand to point at the sky,
“There’s one!”
“Poo, I missed it.”
because I’m not looking
at the sky but at your hand,

that grasped mine while we teetered two stories up on the edge
of a bridge whose lake glistened like crystal,
“Ohmygod, no! We’re going to die.”
“I’ve done it tons of times, c’on,” you roar while leaping
and yanking my hand and my arm and me down too.
I felt my stomach wedge into my throat that smothered my screams
and my limbs as though unconnected to me and I thought that
that second
would be









infinite.
Then there was
a CAHSHOOSH!
and a diluted emerald green
and your eyes squeezed shut
and thunderous silence,
and I wanted to keep it:
the silence,
the green,
you.

“There’s another. Man you suck at this.”
I push a giggle through my clattering teeth,
“Whatever.”
I turn to kiss you on the cheek but you
intercept it with your lips,
“Wh-re,” I mutter, and
with the glint of the waxing gibbous I notice
how your eyes seem
emerald, and
I know I’ve kept it.