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For Melody Nova

For this comet's path I chose it, carved it
to be our temporary castle. In the act of opening
I let its secrets leak out into the starlight,
exposing this pocked and hissing water-ice
as blue as your seven elder sisters.
I shaped it to us till it shone. It is not terraformed
(this is no earth) but transfigured: a chiselled, burnished fluid.

You descend, shimmering darkly.
The scent of you, of alien metals, diffuses
into my atmosphere of breath and frozen dust.
And of desire: you, nebula-born, you empyrean beauty,
I would see you nova-bright and radiant,
pulsing, brilliant with every cosmic hue.
Yet I have tumbled through so many skies,
and found none to be your match. I have no stars to give.

I hold out my empty hands. As solar wind strokes the ice-wall
into light, into life, my reaching fingers glitter with their gift:
We are the void. (I touch your cheek.)
We hold the stars already,
and we burn, we burn.



Toby MacNutt is an author, dancer, and knitter living in rural Vermont. Their work in all media draws on their experience as a nonbinary trans, queer, disabled, and neurodivergent person. Toby's poetry and prose has been published in various magazines and in their collection If Not Skin. Find out more at www.tobymacnutt.com.
Current Issue
12 May 2025

You saw her for the first time at your front door, like she wanted to sell you something or convert you. She had light hair and dark eyes, and she was wearing fatigues, which was the only way you knew that your panicked prayers of the last few minutes had not come true. “Don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m you. From—uh, let’s just say from the future. Can I come inside?”
Time will not return to you as it was.
The verdant hills they whispered of this man so apt to sin / chimney smoke was pure as mountain snow compared to him.
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