prose
It has been 4 weeks and we are already celebrating our 5-month anniversary. This queer love moves in dog years only because no measurement or social construction could contain it, not Time, nor Space, nor whatever planet is in retrograde today.
Two state lines away you are radiating somewhere, I’m sure, trying to convince someone that we are made of the same stardust, and they will disagree, but something in your laughter will remind them of the first time you met, on an asteroid no one has heard of, both of you still distant thoughts in the universe’s unconscious, waiting to meet again in every reincarnation.
Three lightyears from now, I love you in a new galaxy, one where I don’t have to forgive the past to love you in the present. We meet every night on an adjacent star and watch the cosmos dance. We make love in a black hole, in a gravity so strong it bends physics // reason // both of us until we are tumbling over one another and sitting at the shoreline of God’s creation, your head on my shoulder as we name all the beautiful things we can still remember:
An empty park at the end of January. A flower neither of us knew existed until yesterday. A word tripping on the tongue moments before it meets a lover’s ears.
Yesterday, our eyes meet for the first time and we think nothing of it. We are two unknowns crossing paths in a world we weren't sure existed before we did, even now unsure if we are figments of each other’s imaginations.
Tonight, I ride a bike to you. The road is uphill, but I know you are only 4 songs away. Halfway through Lauryn Hill’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You,” I can already hear you laughing, and time ceases to exist.
Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson is a Black queer poet, performer, and educator from San Diego, CA, Co-Director of the award-winning Stanford Spoken Word Collective, and Editorial Assistant at the Adroit Journal. A two-time CUPSI finalist, his work has been featured or forthcoming on Write About Now Poetry and Button Poetry, and in The Adroit Journal, The Unified Anthology, The Oakland Arts Review, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a degree in Cultural/Social Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing at Stanford University, where he has also led two-quarter long poetry workshop courses.