He’s wrong, I laugh, there is no way
to know which have burned out and for what
ages we wait to know. This slow light

cannot always be a blast, a supernova, yet
he’s so sure. As sure as I used to be about
pronouncing the word chimera. Language,

subject as anything to science, is full of strange
and stranger histories. But what I know in the soft
glow of the chimenea logs amid a landscape

of rolling Texas hills and winding stars is that
I like his mad attempt at romance. Earlier, at dusk,
we hiked the yellow grasses and stared as

our bright orb gently moved its nuclear heat
to the other side of the world. Every night
is super nova, chimera, and when we are

wrong we are most true to self, feeling
that fundamental chaos. What we know,
riddled with holes shot into heaven, sieves

molten into soul, impossibly real. And he
is telling me right now our lives are a flash
and I am saying the light takes a long time.