The Observatory After Rain

The hill keeps its wet breath after midnight, pines combing the wind with dark green hands. I climb to the shuttered dome where rust tastes of coins, and puddles hold small, unsteady moons.

Inside, the telescope sleeps under canvas, a long animal dreaming of distance. When I pull the cloth away, dust lifts like incense, and the room remembers the shape of light.

Clouds part by inches, patient as old doors; one star appears, then another, then a river of them. Their cold fire pours through the lens and lays a silver path across my wrists.

For a moment every loss has an orbit, every name I could not keep returns as weather. Dawn thins the constellations to ash, but the hill still glows where the night touched it.