After the Observatory Closed

The dome no longer turns, yet night still climbs its iron ribs. Wild fennel shoulders through cracked concrete, and moths rehearse small prayers around the lens, a cold moon cupped like milk in broken glass.

Children have mapped the constellations in chalk, naming them after buses, dogs, and missing kites. Rain gathers in the dish where astronomers once listened, each drop a silver knock from ordinary weather.

At dawn, a fox crosses the stairwell of equations, tail lit with rust and first light. I sweep the dust from a star chart, and pollen rises, gold as brass music drifting from the town below.

So this is how distances return to earth: through weeds, through laughter, through the patient rot of wires. The sky leans down until we can touch it, not with instruments, but with our ungloved hands.