Koss
Space Changes
Dear Max,
Space forever changed when you fled Earth.
Stars once scattered promise, even in their glittery deaths.
Now a frigid constellation arrests the black sky static,
though Luna reflects a light, not yours, nor hers.
In their faux-spring gala, the dead pretend to live again.
“Cosmic” lights flicker / trick the eyes of hangers-on.
The golden gauze between the worlds is gone.
Space on earth has also changed for worse.
When you died, grocery stores devoured me, sucked me in,
as dreams of meals and joy bled dim.
I hollowed in their empty excess,
further voided by pandemic.
Shelves are now bone-bare.
Frantic, scared, the hoarders scrape them clean.
You boarded just in time, Max.
Things are dire here.
They say it started with a single bat.
—Submitted on 06/25/2020
Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.
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