for those of us who have to
count the stars without names

this is a poem
for people like
me who live with 
a throat full of numbers--
i laugh in threes-- blink--
five times-- 
it takes twelve
foot steps to get to 
the door knob-- turn it twice--
we only have one moon
but i have an infinite 
amount of numbers to 
call upon & they're all 
lodged in my teeth--
i open the window & look
out to innumerate the fragments
of body outside my skin--
sometimes i count the stars
with out names to pretend 
all this counting is adding up
to something &
when i fell from the window 
my chalk outline became
a constellation made up
of the 
un-countable borrowed stars--
i un-clipped orion's belt
& made it into a sash--
filled the big dipper with
peanut butter &
put it in my mouth--
took off the claws of ursa
major one by one until my 
nails were sharp enough
to cut off all the tops of
the trees poking into the 
the sky
-- if you know
me you know that 
i have the task of
counting all these stars
with out names--
i do so under my breath
& sitting up at the end of 
my bed in the middle of
the night when other 
people curl themselves up
like punctuation marks--
these commas-- 
i sleep
like a semi-colon--
wake up an asterisk--
all these numbers
rotting away my teeth
& i have another dream of 
them falling out of my skull
& onto the carpet--
i count breaths & ceiling tiles
& uneven squares of sidewalk--
unhinge my rib cage-- 
let loose the moths to 
knock themselves against 
the porch light for another
evening &
my father comes out &
tells me to call it a night
but there's still more
to count-- 
so, there i was
at the window falling out
& falling out & falling out
until i'm the constellation
on the pavement--
i open my mouth & outcome 
a swarm of numbers counting 
each other & counting me
& counting again
the stars without names--
the ones that have gone
dark before we could see
them-- invisible & haunting 
the soft underbelly 
of the one & only moon-- 
we only have one moon--