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How does the universe honor your smile
when I remove my glasses and dim the room?
Your eyebrows frame the solar system,
exchanging planets with greater stars
in the illuminated pitch, wild hair
draping your shoulders above me,
curtaining the lamp’s distant glow. And
what sun would rise without your benediction?
Numbering my days, I retrace the histories
of our respective orbits on their separate
planes, admire the ascendant angles
and the collapsing distance as you draw
near, our gravities unmatched, bound yet
parallel, perfecting the ineluctable collision.
Robert Okaji holds a BA in history, served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, toiled as a university administrator, and no longer owns a bookstore. He was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer, and lives, for the time being, in Indiana with his wife, stepson, and cat. His first full length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press sometime in the near future (not posthumously, he hopes). His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review, Only Poems, Indianapolis Review, and at his blog, O at the Edges, www.robertokaji.com, and as @robertokaji on X.