unlucky love

Hi friends. I’ve added a little voiceover with this poem if you want to hear me read it out loud (you want to). The reading is of an earlier version of the poem, so I hope you’ll excuse the inconsistencies, but I love my wined-out tone, and the buzz of the summer, and the murmur of the waves, which I haven’t been quite able to recreate. Enjoy.

i don’t tend to seek truths
in the placements of celestial bodies at the instant of my first breath
but today i can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some mapping between the small horizon and the big horizon
if celestial dynamics can’t be used as a dictionary to interpret our terrestrial ones

our love was born on a carpet one night in cancer season, heart-first, emotions running deep, intuitions and desires heightened, 
yet the moon was a zesty crescent waning out of aries and set half my face aflame
which must have been no good omen for us, not yet lovers, not quite friends, 
rather some in-between or over-above that we could have taken to define

yet, like the swan i watched groom himself this morning
who came towards me as i swam out
long-necked and side-eyed,
we circled each other in salty splashes of fear and familiarity 
until one of us got distracted by whatever past was lurking on the unmade sea bed