Aether
by Meaghan Kelly


Lungs breathe deep wisteria soaked air
as eyes absorb the unnatural brightness 
of tonight’s moon — a foretoken of grace,

but from my place down here
beneath the dusty space of stars and infinite perspectives
this moon’s size is only an illusion

I bestow onto the bare limbs
that splinter its stone-like surface,
becoming of lace rather than some unknown celestial body.
From down here, it seems as if I could walk
right up and into it. A circular door cut out of darkness
unveiling boundless phosphorescence.

Perhaps this is what you saw 
right before your fate string was cut short. Convinced
it was some seraphic doorway, pulled by magnetic fields
or entered willingly

into some place warmer than December,
some place where your poison is not in fact poison
but the aether of an unreachable heaven.






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