Astrocytes in the brain seem as numerous
and shapely as stars in the universe,
but when the stars in your brain go awry,
they behave like dark energy, changing
the shape of time.
You see time’s boundaries. Constraints
get into your blood and bones,
a double-barreled two years of choices
to make on days you are able make them.
You’re un-glued and re-glued in an instant,
and everything’s palliative after.
That cloak of care is another kind
of starlight, and it’s all surgery and radiation
by which you discern what’s what.
What had been an idea of happiness
by which you tried
to live becomes this moment
and the next and the need to nap
and weep, the want of words, the memory
of magic that each friend
bequeaths in your mind, however
small, the need
to father finitely and
to love for all the time in the world.
—for Adam