To Paralume

By ​Costantino Toth

The skirt’s tight
around your pronged legs.
You’re tired.   You don’t
want to dance.
 
But it’s our date night
and,    with the dark clicked on,
your rugate
peach skirt
spins into naẓar.
 
I can’t sleep.       What if
the I.S.S.’s three
tons of scrap
don’t properly fondue in heaven,
like when zero–point–six
kilos of inconel
forked the clay tile roof,
second piano,     piano,
and missed
my snoozing head by two rooms.
Papà held the stanchion
snug like a charm.
 
That’s why I scooped you
from a trash bin.
Oh fallen,    oh baby,
oh apotropaion
against a life lived off–target.
I love you
for your inverse,   for unlike-
you whirling
through my eyelids’ afterhours
​like a ground something,
the perfect smidge.

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​Costantino Toth is a 1st-gen immigrant, researcher, warehouse worker, and writer. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany, The Good Life Review, The Rumpus, and Two Thirds North. She currently pursues her M.A. in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, and is finishing up her first chapbook, ‘La Selva di Circe.’