After Thirty Minutes, Dark Adaptation Occurs

by Emily Townsend

The sky is rarely clear during spring
in Willamette Valley, and tonight
there is a star coruscating

through the cloudless canvas, as if to say,
I am still here, please don’t forget I exist
Earlier, daffodils were drunk with rain.

I am your backpack as you fall
asleep. I watch this asterism burn
and dim like a stagnant plane, fixated
yet moving as our planet orbits. I assume

this is the only thing alive in the dark.
You snore loud enough to wake up
the horizon, and Little Dipper panhandles out,
Draco curves toward the zenith.

Wrinkles. Constellations are wrinkles
dimpling to hold onto an invisible line.

Every morning I look at your eyes and imagine
if crow’s feet will appear when we get old.
If I can mirror your happiness. Right before

I notice the star—Venus, I guessed, but planets
don’t twinkle—we talked about high school,
you sitting on the curb waiting for no one,

me hiding away in the yearbook room
recording other people’s stories (not ours).
I said, “We were both very sad kids.”

We’ve all seen it before—astronomical twilight
painting us into blurry curves, our hands the only
focus we can hang onto in the typhlotic compass above.

I know we won’t be immortalized up there,
I can’t expect that. Your breathing slows, your skin thins,
your wrinkles begin their journey.

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