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Cosmic Beauty

by Johnny Packer
Chapter 1
The stars are not lanterns.
They are nails,
hammered deep into the lid of the night.
I have walked beneath them too long,
and now the sky itself
creaks above me.

Her voice on the radio
did not bend or break.
It simply named the hour,
and the hour arrived,
like a train already moving
before I ever heard its whistle.

I wanted to believe in detours,
to think the road
could be bribed with gasoline and grit.
But every fencepost I passed
already carried my initials,
scratched there by hands
I do not remember owning.

I kept telling myself
the desert was endless.
That was the lie I clung to,
like a drunk clutching his bottle,
like a preacher clutching his hymn.
But the end has teeth,
and it has been following
for miles.

Now the stars lean closer,
not warm,
not cold,
but watchful.
They peel the skin of the dunes away,
showing black water beneath,
an ocean of silence
that swallows every story whole.

This death is not romantic.
No ballad will take root here.
There will be no cross on the roadside,
no flowers left wilting in a jar.
Only my bones,
picked apart by wind,
scattered thin as paper ash.

And yet,
it is cosmically beautiful.
To watch the verdict arrive
as though it had always been waiting,
to see her voice
stitched into the static,
to know the stars
have closed their hands around me.

Even now, as I write,
the ink refuses to hold.
Letters fall into dust.
Sentences drift apart like cattle smoke.
I cannot stop it.
She foretold it.
And it will happen.

Because the stars are not lanterns.
They are nails,
and I was born to lie beneath them.