Nightshades & Moonlight

I am harvesting moonlight with my teeth

Because I have been starved of a harvest otherwise.

Little bugs have eaten their way through my crops

And the fertile land of my thoughts has gone fallow.

Should I have rotated in the black nightshade

Or simply just eaten the berries I've kept locked

In my bedside drawer?

Oh, who knows!

Not me.

It is all the same to me.

I will either be poisoned by the

Glossy black berries or the orange liquor of the moon

And either way, it will be a trip that I'll never forget

Because isn't it a pretty thing to be poisoned by something

As grandiose and untouchable as our thoughts?

My thoughts are killing me,

Driving me

To my grave.

My thoughts have knives,

Shining daggers catching moonlight and driving it

Straight through my chest as though my ribs never existed.

As though I have no armor...do I have any armor?

Or have I been reckless and bare this entire time?

I thought that maybe there was an antidote in my blood

But that couldn't have been true when I was dreaming of devouring

Dying constellations and their toxic fumes.

Maybe I am a dying star,

Burning out,

Cooling into a black dwarf.

Maybe I am shifting into the matte black ball

Of a nightshade with no power to kill, just a star that shed its light

To float aimlessly and uselessly through the expanse of space

As it loses all its planets, its stargazers, its bright-eyed lovers.

Certainly, I am a dead star.

Finally fizzing out,

Going

Dark.