night-club love-letter to a stranger

August 2023 

Stranger, 

I know three things about you. Each thing is a charm, something to twirl and marvel at. We dance and I turn each charm in my fingers, then I set them in the sky so they become stars. Three stars in the dark sky, that is how you’re made. I swing from one star to the other, then stand on tip-toe to connect all three. Stretching, I reach one with my nose, touch one on my fingertips and one with my toe. Between the stars is darkest dark into which I plunge my own stranger-strangeness so I disappear in endless nothing that is also everything. From inside the nothing, I feel you connect easily the three stars I exposed to you. With one hand, palm arched, your fingers reach all three. 

Upstairs is very dangerous to us three-starred strangers, because it is brightly lit, quiet and cold. In the light, stars are feeble. Your hand shrinks and I grow. We are embarrassed to have been so enchanted, we barely look each other in the eye. Our tripartite constellations loose their mathematical perfection and break into messy thousands. Mistake mis-take we mis-took each-other for reflections of our most fantastical selves.

illustrations by Lydia Lott