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40 STAR CHART Like sweat, the sign of his mouth evaporates on her neck. She’s thinking of the planets spinning through zones that regulate her luck in love or finance. He blames these moods on her friends and their young men, struggling all the time to stay together or apart. He knows how our paths look purposeful if considered from a distance. Those teenaged couples who name imaginary children wouldn’t dream of numbering the string of cars they’ll drive or minor surgeries endure. And his love— anticipating fictions, she expects the death of a parent, but not the death of a pet. He’s wrung disruptions large and small through habit, and what survives clouds like glass scraped by the river’s sandy tongue. A scattering of pills on the night stand forms its own zodiac, and if he spins into the house of Xanax, it isn’t chance but willful ellipse that’s brought him there. ...

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