aries.

when you lived in the basement, i dreamt of going down
there, finding you, kissing you, replacing an unnamed ache
with thirteen-year-old love. i wonder if you would have
let me stay.

taurus.

it was when you whispered, princess. when you held my hand
in the dark, rubbed my back amid frenzy. when i took you
on my knees, confessed every dirty thought i ever had. we forget
what it was like not to know.

gemini.

i named you gemini. you cusp, you bridge. you moment of
insanity. i never saw myself in you. never attached your name to
my heart. but i can see your face as clear as day. i can hear your voice just
behind my ear.

cancer.

you will always be here. a quickening, a still birth. you will always be
the poem i can’t finish, a door i can’t close. a needle through a vein.
i never thought bathroom floors could be sacred. i never thought an i love
you could turn so cold.

leo.

we built a house in our heads. a townhome in the city. yellow, black-
shuttered. i would have planted flowers, grown tomatoes—       killed
myself in the spare room. taken the house down with me, matches &
candles & gasoline. we were a slow burn.

virgo.

i thought you were an always. they talked at us like i wore a ring
on my left finger. like we weren’t children. like we’d be. now,
i hear your name in passing, & i don’t shake. i don’t
quiver. i don’t do anything.

libra.

i’ll find you in the summer. call you libra moon. hope
for taurus-kindness, capricorn-passion. for cancer-
love. i haven’t met you yet, but i’ve made you. carved a space
in my heart. on my arm.

scorpio.

i was eighteen when you found me. straw hair & dangling limbs
& wrist scars. you were bright eyes & freckled arms— normal.
we met under the moon, but you left me for the sun.

sagittarius.

the wind had nothing on you.

capricorn:

every seven years, your skin replaces itself. this poem has been seven
years in the making. you have eyes like gun metal. voice like lyric.
temper, a fist. called me your moon, said i was the glow in the dark.
asked me why i never wrote you poems— they will never be enough.

aquarius:

your ice eyes could melt bone. i saw danger, and i took it. kept it close
to my breast. you swore you never wanted me, but the cold
didn’t lie. there will never be a right time. there will never be
a moment.

pisces:

i built you a moon where there was only dark, tried to make you
a wishing star. i wish i could say, fuck you, take your darkness and
force it out between my lips; maybe i like it there.