Marrow of the Telescope

The hill held its breath beneath a net of frost, and the telescope, a small cathedral of glass, leaned into the sky as if listening for salt. In the eyepiece, a cratered silence bloomed.

I counted the ribs of Orion like a rosary and felt the cold move through my sleeves— a patient animal, nosing the seam of my pulse, teaching me the slow grammar of distant fires.

Somewhere a satellite scuffed the dark, its brief wound stitched shut by the wind; I thought of letters I never sent, their envelopes swelling with starlight.

When dawn unwound its copper thread, I folded the tripod, the night’s small skeleton, and carried home the ache of light-years, that sweet, impossible weight of looking.