This is my box of twilight and inside
is everything that disappeared when
we weren’t looking like glaciers and God,
the lonely astronaut waving as she
drifts from one starfield to another. Here’s
the stone I found that glimmered in my hands
like a promise made mineral. My name
the frozen lake my body treads across.
This time, I’ll walk into the house and ask
why my hands feel so dirty. A rose pinned
to my shirt like a throbbing ear, an ear
listening to the wreckage scraping at
the bottom of your words. The candle flame
like a tongue asking the room for water.
C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. He’s the author of the micro-chapbook This Might Have Meant Fire (Bull City Press), and the Editor-in-Chief of Dirty Paws Poetry Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, RHINO, 32 Poems, Foundry, Grist, and Elsewhere.