All the stars burn

late in this black gown,

each worn into a plastic version

of themselves. We hold onto this version

of ourselves in our seats.

Roll call, we switch up

the battery, tread onto a stage collapsing

under astral weight, weight we nursed ourselves

back to: no more powerlines stripped into

our veins to light up a classroom, or sobs for S to stop

scribbling, all the twists on her

notebook screaming—failure, failing, a sorry.

Before then, I orbited

around the tracks as the sun shrank

their rubber holes, praying: no burial, let me extinguish

before the finish line. But night delayed us

into silhouettes; we choked our crying in the locker

room. On the Salsbury bench, you drew us cutlery and two plates

and pointed to the ceiling light, yelling,

this is the sun we will smother,

the bulb we will outburn

by a thousand degrees, and feasted

on its glass shards. At dawn, their light bled

out of our equalizers. We drank it all; we

breathed: one more revolution

and we could exit. We could leave the ellipse and

stray ourselves into something stellar, a planetoid hotter

than those circuits, a ringlet spanning longer

than saturn, a death from a collision larger

than this city god we are always so much more than

what they bound us to.