I dreamt of our house, which doesn't exist...
I'll light a candle in it and greet the dawn.
I'll feel sad by candlelight. I'll be missed.
I want you'll be near me in our house for long!

I'll walk into the garden, which doesn't exist...
I'll pick white camomiles and make a bunch.
I'll put it on the table. It'll be my feast.
Just fly into my dream! I please you much!

We'll stroll in a forest, which doesn't exist...
I'll mass there an armfull of autumn leaves.
I'll throw them into the sky. They'll be a mist.
And they'll be falling slowly under the breeze.

I dreamt of our house.  And maybe is it?
It's somewhere over the hill, green all.
The garden is so very overgrown. I'll revive it.
I'll light the candle for you to come for all.

As neon pulses through a sleepless night,
The sidewalks bustle with wandering ghosts,
And vapor rises — a mist of pale steam
From streets that glint beneath an autumn rain.

I see a woman in a ruby coat;
Her shadow pools round her feet, like spilled ink,
As she tries to mouth a name through the haze —
A name unheard over the subway’s groan.

She’s gone before the streetlights flicker, but
Her shadow lingers a moment longer,
Stretching out beneath the gilded lamplight —
But was she ever even there at all?

No answer falls with the September rain,
No hint comes drifting on the pallid mist.
And still the train rumbles on unconcerned,
And I can’t recall why she had mattered.

The neon curdles within its veins,
While darkness swallows the ruby echo,
And I walk these streets among the phantoms,
To fade at last into the night once more.
©️2025 David Cornetta

I could've just laid down if
I wanted to

ignoring the bells that echoes
inside my head

Let the earth swallow me
among withered leaves that decay
beside me

Let the world dry out
as if all lamented things
belong to me

I could act as if
my heart is an icy winter water,
never to beat, never to warm at all

Granite skies would drift above me,
haunting me in my night and
summer days

But in the thunder that frightens me
A swift lightning would pass me by,
a crack of gold in my darkest night

The flood crashing through doors,
through all the breathe that I've lost
I would learn to hold every air that I touch

All the celestial mass throbbing in my chest
The distant rumble of supernovas
that tears me apart,
and black sunshine that shines on my face

Even if midnight splatters beneath my eyes,
with all the stars that glimmer
that badly wants to fall

Even if half of my shadow is blown to nether
I would suffer everyday, and in my pain
I knew I could feel

I would die everyday, with all lamented things
and in all my deaths

I have learned to live

Glowing far beneath a band of burning crystal,
He drifted through silence, heartbroken and distal—
A whisper of frost left behind by trailing light,
As the comet passed far above in endless night.

He sang to distant suns, though they raised no refrain;
His voice, just a glimmer beneath the comet’s train.
No orbit, no axis, in his celestial drift—
Just the chill of pale starlight, too distant to shift.

Yet, far on the curve of the comet’s silver flare,
She wandered through silence, though as yet unaware—
A shimmer in motion and untouched by regret,
Her path not his own, though it had not diverged yet.

Though light-years apart in their transcendent array,
A trace of astral longing had altered her way,
Their paths, though still distant, were to cross in the night,
Beneath the comet, passing by in stellar flight.
©️2025 David Cornetta

From my debut collection—If Saturn Should Fall— now available!