for the little prince

These thoughts have veiled
and settled
like gauze over roses,
the stirring snags and destroys.
I am pulled
in ten tender directions.
Things move in me and ache like the absence of a thorn.
The world is so small, and I can walk to see the sunset any time I like.

But I like
the dark, and the stars.
I like imagining the friends on planets I have never seen, who might love me,
if they knew me.
And I think of them,
those strangers who will tame me,
and the hurt
is for their soft hands I have never felt,
and their bright shining eyes that have not cried with me.

It is strange
to look into the night and see
the spaces between stars, the black
that is endlessness.
It is like looking into the future and divining all that you will ever know,
before you know it.