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what's the difference between a constellation and an asterism, anyway

Isaura Ren

and does it matter when all the stars are dying, even the ones you named after us, pair of printer-paper certificates to prove it, the ones you pencil-charted so we could both see them on new year’s eve, and true to your promise there they are, framed in the winter triangle between sirius and betelgeuse, to my northeast and your northwest, and what is relativity but a middle finger, what is distance but a vacuum, and i have never promised anything so forever as this and somehow you still want me, and if i were betelgeuse and you were sirius would you still want me, if we were spinning up there do you think we’d see us clearer, do you think we’d appear as apart as we are, do you think you could calculate our collision course as hypotenuse, because a supernova is just a reunion and i could not ask for a softer collapse, because i don’t care if a kiss means lights out, because in the black i am still drifting for you, i am still drifting, i am still

About the Author

Isaura Ren (they/them) was born under a full moon in Aquarius. They are the founding editor of perhappened and the author of INTERLUCENT (2020), a chapbook that's basically about the stars. Their work is featured or forthcoming in Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Okay Donkey Mag, Parentheses Journal, and more. Tweet at them @isaurarenwrites.

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