No. 4

Spring 2003

as we orbit. I've come to identify the interstellar medium as the distance
between two suspended bodies. When I felt your hand above the blanket,
somewhere over my shoulder, hovering, I remembered my last year

stargazing. How the ruins of my home(-sick) birth place, that atomic test city,
seemed to shimmer as if in a great twist of heat -- the upper quadrant's
crust still scarred with lacing railway tracks, where the aging children hauled
their sledgehammers and pennies -- an attempt to transform dull metal
into something spectacular and memorable, without vehicle. How the plastic
utensil factory hummed laboriously through the night, gurgling its fine
pleuristic smoke -- turning each spot of light into a halo-ed lamp and forcing
salt-water from my eyes -- blurring the shape and size of the quartered moon.
And the one night my father woke me at midnight to observe a meteor shower --

the heavy delirious tread of our soles on earth, the one lonely moment our hands
overlapped on the wet grass, forgetting the raw frailty of skin. The realization
comes slow -- that you only meant to wake me, introduce me to the city we have

circled (on the map) --

Copyright 2003, Tegan Echo Rieske

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.