Charlotte Amelia Poe
in this corner of the universe there is a constellation set aside for you
If you buy enough gold acrylic paint, and paint stars on your ceiling against the dark, then maybe, just maybe, the world won't end.
And if it ends anyway, debris beating at the plasterboard as the ceiling groans and the stars start to crack and splinter, then god, at least you'll have something to look at, to be less alone as home swallows you whole.
If you imagine, for a second, we are not on a planet, spinning out in space. Instead, we exist in two dimensions, with limits to test and strain against but never cross. And you are there and I am here, and there is an entire map between the two of us, and the world will end before your mouth breathes into mine.
And so, also, if the sky does fall, and you are there, and I am here, then the map we are on will grow heavy with the weight of it, and start to cave, and it is there that I will meet you, girl, in the folded paper of your expectations, and all the rivers and all the roads will be no more than lines, and we will be the only real things, and if there are no stars left, we will make the stars anew.
And - well. If the world doesn't end, the story goes differently, and I can make fewer promises, tucked away by coordinates and street names. You tell me seaside and I tell you field, and I have never shared the sunset with you in a way that mattered.
Girl, if we can't have hot chocolate one November afternoon when the air is crisp and you are blushed pink with it, then I wonder, could I trade a star, my hands stained gold, rubble in my hair as I beg all the gods of all the universe for a golden hour, carved out of time that isn't yours, or mine, but ours.
A ghost is rooted by the certainty of its demise. And oh, the stars are so so heavy against the softest parts of me. So girl, beautiful girl, longed after girl, sometimes chemical girl, if I do not build a bonfire, then at least allow a flare into the night.
And a message in a bottle never read as sweet as when it arrived to you in flames.
Charlotte Amelia Poe (they/them) is an autistic nonbinary author from England. Their first book, How To Be Autistic, was published in 2019. Their debut novel, The Language Of Dead Flowers, was published in September 2022. Their second novel, Ghost Towns, was self published in 2023. Their second memoir, (currently untitled), will be published in 2024. Their poetry has been published internationally.