All of a sudden
I understand
what has been happening to me
over these last months:

my hands and feet still work
as they always have but feel
stiff and needle-filled, oddly
dry when they are wet, 
chilled and dripping
though I stand on dry carpet,
so I have Stopped Trusting them;

whether I encounter 
once-beloved faces in person
or in newspapers lying
in the street, they all seem
gray and obsolete and 
I have Stopped trusting them;

I lie often on the couch
ranting into cups of weak coffee
as days have become weeks
have become months;

I have stopped counting down
to birthdays, holidays, and
other special occasions,
letting them go unmarked as 
I have stopped trusting in them 
for anything more than 
betrayals of my hope
and memory.

Now I have squeezed all this
into my core and pressed it 
hard into a ball and felt it
go nuclear and spread its heat
into all my limbs.

What will follow
will be a blinding light
as I burst from within.
This is how I will 
become at last a sun. 

You shouldn’t stand
so close. In some faraway
world, some far-ahead time,
I may yet be hailed as a star
but right now, right here,
there will be only burning 
where I once stood;
that is one thing
in which I still trust.