We leave our souls like luggage—
bodies like garment bags.
In the bat‑black clock hours,
we usher meteors,
like tiny golden pins up the ivory
heights the day calls clouds.

Children’s buckets at our hips jingle
when they kiss—dream‑power makes us taller.
Nightgowns and PJs sweeping like flags.
Slippers loosen jangly baubles of frozen rain.

A hundred million assemble themselves
into a backup band for the universe.
Sounds arrive that other minds might call
interference—or harmony.

When we step, at last, on that sister planet,
we do not offer fiery trinkets, or buckets silver as stars.
We stand, mouths open, to voice the language
we own—and cannot sing in it.