There should be constellations named after the way
your body felt when it slid home into mine.
A great paleontologist once said that insects pressed in amber
are nature’s love letters preserved
like the string of fingerprints you left all over my skin,
a dusting so light a DNA sweep would leave them undetected.
It’s hypothesized that beetles leave behind their dry husks
in death as a way of providing evidence
that they once lived in bodies that were capable of love,
so I hope that wherever I go after here,
I leave my skin behind for someone else to find.
You, the birdwatcher, the beekeeper, the only person
whose liver spots I’d ever come to like.
They say that the person you’re meant to spend
the rest of your life with will re-hardwire your brain
the way flies do in the seconds before they hit the window
until all your neurons no longer remember what it felt like
to look at someone without wanting
to be with them until the grave.
So the next time you look up into the night sky
to search for all the brightest stars,
I hope there’s one named for you and me.