Lines Before Dawn

When the house is no longer simply a place where I wake

to get ready for work, a launch pad to a school—

and instead, by leisure, has become a dark sky twinkling

constellations of sleeping machines, bright clusters

of red, white, green and blue lights, and I have wandered

into my youngest grown son’s room to find a black hole

where no light switches or charging phones glow—it is time

to step out onto the peeling deck with my forgotten feet,

thin socked, my mother’s silent, soft blanket wrapped around me.

No swishing materials of my body to steal peace, I look up.

Deep space offers its trail of ancient smoke and tiny stars.

Planets I can’t name are aligned, planets I learned earlier online.

There they are. Two meteors draw their lines across the night

like a sweet girl drawing then erasing her marks.