asterlune

[asterlune]

not the love of my life — aster lune

[asterlune]

the weight of quiet evenings — aster lune

[asterlune]

dancing with ghosts — aster lune

[asterlune]

reflections on an empty glass — aster lune

[asterlune]

the kitchen — aster lune

[asterlune]

return of the ghost — aster lune

[asterlune]

somewhere out there someone has probably used AI to write their wedding vows. someone out there is probably loading their hinge profile with AI quippy responses. when i close my eyes i picture a man hunting through chatGPT prompts, trying to get someone else to love him. maybe she sends him back chatGPT too, and two robots fall in love.

is this our new lives, then? is love scripted? i have a dandelion heart and some part of me wants to believe that AI will not obtain self-reliance by evil but instead by discovering the single perfect shape of love - the one thing humanity (in all our time and force) could never quite nail down. maybe it will be a string of numbers. the imprint of static, the universe's thumbprint. maybe it will just be a single long mirror, and jam dripping down your hands.

i know there are "good" reasons. i was nervous! or i was unsure how to say it! but - i want your nervous words. i want your unsure words. i want you to strike entire pages of work for me. i want you to gesture vaguely, to ransack your mind for ways to instead-of-saying just show me. i want to find where your words fail you and where the summer of your longing blazes out of you, infinite, resisting the capture of definition.

and i want to do the same for you. isn't any love worth a little bit of struggle? i want to shiver with the movie-ripe sense my friends are lovely and i am so tender towards them - i want to never quite be able to explain what it means to spend my life with them. i want to draw shapes on your skin that exit the geometric and fade into the same, wordless pattern. it is still love if silent. you know - i rarely, if ever, actually tell my siblings i love them? i just show up often, and hope the action does the talking.

i know AI is "easier". of course. buttoned up and seamlessly corporate. but i do not want to love you through a film. i do not want to love you with your edges sanded down. i cannot recognize myself in you if you are unmarred and glistening. something about how, with the crystal-clear mp3 files of the present, we ache for the scratch of vinyl. the flaws are what make love worth it. i want the raw and the windbeaten and the unkempt.

something tender, then. i love you because you're real, which means that you cannot be perfect.

[asterlune]

aging grace — aster lune

[asterlune]

Happy Father’s Day — aster lune

a poem dedicated to my sweet husband

[asterlune]

written in the stars — aster lune

[asterlune]

more than yesterday — aster lune

[asterlune]

pride in color — aster lune

[asterlune]

nocturnal longing — aster lune

[asterlune]

unspoken regret — aster lune

[asterlune]

unwritten muse — aster lune

[asterlune]

unraveling love — aster lune

[asterlune]

echoes of goodbye — aster lune