Starbed

I have heard that the stars are not really above but below me.

I hang off the Earth like a sweater drying on a clothesline 

and the universe yawns as a pulsating cavern, 

alive with the light of the glowworms. 

When I was twelve years old, I went to a Planetarium, 

with my gift shop binoculars and my map of constellations, 

the last days of summer melting on my tongue

like the sour apple otter pop I bought outside for exactly sixty cents. 

When my friends ask me when it was that I ceased to be a child, I tell them, 

growing up is a place, a space, an empty crevice, between the black holes of couch cushions 

where my grubby chubby hand searched in the dark for spare change,

a nebulous creekbed where I clad my toes in frog-shaped wellies, 

because I could no longer distinguish between alien crawdads and rusty nails,

it is a doctor’s office where I began to read the scoliosis pamphlets on the wall

instead of drawing rockets on the crisp white sheet, 

the Neptunian valley between the creases of my father’s forehead

when I told him that lately the world has been too much for me,

it is here — in this Planetarium, 

where the invisible man tells me the universe is so vast and ever-expanding 

that I am nothing more than an atom-split speck —

It is here, right now, when I look down at the stars.