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Orbit (For Ruby)

We met in the wreckage of a Rocklands afternoon—  

two broken satellites glittering into each other’s gravitational pull,  

debris from different explosions suddenly finding  

this impossible synchronous dance around shared tea cups  

& mysterious burns on the living room table where we learned  

that chaos, sweet chaos, makes the finest adhesive  

for souls that never learned to stay in one constellation.


And now we are here, 

living in the same four walls  

like bad jazz musicians 

who’ve found their rhythm in discord,  

your pink cracked tea mug next to mine in the sink  

like spray painted flags hung from shoulders in a social hurricane

beautiful & temporary & somehow eternal  

while I mentally pace the hallway at 3 AM 

wondering  

if you’re counting the ways I leave my books everywhere  

And whether friendship forged in such a beautiful disaster  

can survive the mundane terrorism of shared rent  

And whose turn it is to buy washing powder.


The cats brought fleas, little tiny vampires  

hopping like anxiety made manifest,  

& I manic vacuum with the holy dedication  

of a monk sweeping abbey floors  

while my paranoid heart whispers:  

This is it—the moment you realise  

I am chaos without the beauty,  

I am destruction without the poetry.


But you’ll just laugh & spray the furniture  

like you’re blessing it with holy water  

& I think maybe friendship  

is not about being perfect satellites  

in predictable orbit

but about being beautiful disasters  

spinning through space together,  

collecting each other’s debris  

& calling it a home.


Still, I wake up some nights  

afraid you’ll find a better constellation,  

one that doesn’t come with fleas  

& neurotic 3 AM pacing  

And my 300 books scattered like abandoned prayers

but then another morning breaks  

& you’re making forbidden cheese toast for two  

And you’re mumbling off-key while you do it  

& I remember:


We are the friendship that shouldn’t work  

but does,  

the impossible mathematics  

of two broken things  

making something whole  

in the beautiful, flea-infested,  

Tea-stained, perfect chaos  

we call living together


& if that’s not love,  

it’s the closest thing  

to revolution  

I’ve ever known.

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