“Celestial Sestina” by Alyssa Barbosa

Cautious, approaching a well,

my wishes are caught in the wind.

The powers that taught me to sing

remind me of places I’ve been -

constellations, stars that I’ve scaled,

quasars I’ve seen on display.

Futures before me are splayed,

a multiverse known all too well.

Entropy’s broken the scale

and I’m caught like a grass on the wind

that’s been pulled into orbit by an Elysian being

who has single-handedly caused a singularity.

The orbiting moons have paused in their singing -

they refuse to partake in the play

between going, and doing, and being,

though others are wishing them well.

The supernovas unwind,

asking “when am I, what is my timescale?”

The void is a silent and thundering scale

remembering lost wintersong.

Hearken the music, the woodwinds,

these experts who astrally play

to the ether, absorbed in the swell

of the lightyears ahead, and all those that have been.

At the heart of a faraway star, you find a celestial being

whose gravitational ore can’t be measured with scales -

starships are wishing her well.

Together, eternally singing

on the stage of the cosmos, watching a coordinated display.

They’re dancing on soft solar winds.

Endlight approaches, orbits unwind

and they settle into earthly ways of being.

They master the wordplay,

lives life to its scale

while secretly chanting age-old songs,

that delight the heavenly wishing wells.

The wind finds my face, in the space where I dwell.

“How long has it been since I sang you a song?”

And so I sit on the blanket of the cosmos, humming a final celestial scale.