When I was a young woman
my hair grew lush of its own accord

like orchard grass,
tangled, and burnt pale gold
 
down my back, something a fold of sheep
might nibble on. A boy I thought

I loved seemed not to see
me at all, looked right through me

as if I were made of dry stocks. So I cut
off my locks, short, like a boy’s,

to show him. Stars wink on and off,
lights to guide and remind us, lost mariners
 
that we are. I was nineteen,
drifting, had tossed my virginity

away like a wet tissue. Life happened
somewhere else and I wanted
 
to be there. From the eyes
of voyaging, camera-equipped

telescopes, we can see into deep space
and the elegance of the cosmos.

Blood cartwheels metallic star-litter
through my body each month,

or did when I was young and fell
in love with that boy. We were a galaxy

of silences and treacheries, he and I,
a story of beginnings, endings,

spicy as a woman’s most
private self. I was a girl who

had forgotten the words for
whatever she felt. Voyager I
 
quests in soundless regions far
out beyond the Milky Way,

whispering its questions.
That boy and I were human

antennas trying to hear each
other. He died in a car crash,
 
disappeared behind a door  
cut into the spongy earth
 
that opens into the living
space between stars.

I barely understood him when I
had the chance. Except for his
 
blistering coffee-bean eyes. Those
I stared into every chance I got.
 

—Kathryn Hunt

Poet’s Website

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