Meet the Owl with Eyes Like the Night Sky

–with a title from I Fucking Love Science

We all knew the boy who plucked out his glass eyeon the bus to distract the match-lighting boys,

the bigger boys, from setting his only jacket on fire.We played Marco Polo with him in the community pool,

and every drowned pebble, every concrete chipsent us hopping to the edge screaming the eye

the eye    the eye. And then one day in English classhe skipped a rock between the desks during King Lear.

Only it wasn't a rock. It was his glass eye,and we tossed it to each other with a stage whisper—

Out, vile jelly!—until the teacher cleared her throat,and to save him I hid it under my tongue

for the rest of that year and the next and the next.And it felt like a love story in my mouth,

as brilliant as a planet, a piece of galaxy aflamein the distance, always watching us wherever we swam.