Wolverine Stew: Same Stars

This begins with a question

How to thread a handful of years

Through a thousand words

And at first, I went for that

Sunset over Palmer Field

Over the classes where I learned about

Bioluminescence and serpent hoards

And what to do when a screw’s

Let loose through the fan of your laptop

(Which is mostly panic, by the way)

But I couldn’t quite catch the wisps of

Orange giving way to the night

So down I walked past

Two theatres, tonight with no moon,

Halls formed from paper monsters

From which celebration echoes

A courtyard of black-feather leaves

Where first this all began

Where I found a world of

Strange music and a good few

Kind words of encouragement to

Try this all out in the first place

And I kept on going

Stumbling upon the

Pothole pock-marked path

Taken in a parade of maize and blue

Trying to keep the cold at bay

I ended up before the stadium

A family necessity when our weekend came

Where I realized that the screams of a crowd

Are quite contagious

And I smile with the static

Still singing in my ears

But this isn’t quite it

So I wander a little more

And the sky darkens in

The sweet scent of shadowy lilacs

As I turn my attention upward

And there it is

How do I write a goodbye?

How could it hold

Every last thank you for the

Laughter I was let into?

I think of every

Walk with a friend spent trying to

Rot each other’s brains when

They became too full of phantoms

Every evening spent shouting at dice

Made of benevolent stones and troll skulls

With the friendliest chaos one can conjure together

Every post-it note needed to make a

Smile that stood in a window for a semester

And maybe one more that stays a little longer

Every mask I carefully made

As I joined in the revelries of

The one night each year I start to come back

From the ghost I can make of myself

Every strum and song and

Wild of words hustling towards happier trails

Every moment before the lights dimmed

And showed their rising beams of dust

Because each scene was built beforehand

And sung of afterward, the words a flash

Across a screen we all crowded around

Scenes made of plastic trees and hot glue gun thyrsi

Pinprick green constellations and roses, real and parchment

And all the days spent

Going from forests to films

To markets to midnight vaults

To arcades and on across Ann Arbor

Always with those I will be

Grateful to call my friends

All of that

How does goodbye hold all of that?

Well, it doesn’t

So instead, I’ll thread a hopeful “see you later”

Through the thousand words above

And look to the streetlight

That we’ll pretend is a sunrise for now

Because no matter what

For all those memories and people

That a goodbye could never hold

I’m under the same stars as you