The Cosmos Ice-cream

The hot noon held a gun to my head

and forced me to buy an ice-cream, so

I chose a chocolate cone.

At the table outside the chilly shop,

an old lady with a coconut bowl

sat across from me and started chatting

with a random customer, but her

coal Labrador — Lucy (as the old lady called her)

was staring at my glutinous universe.

Exhausted, I sank in her whirling ears. Leaves,

stars, distant galaxies rotate over

this drunken kingdom where we are all proven

dizzy unless someone purposes a center.

Only on this black earth do we spoon ice-cream,

feel tired, seek and lament.

I swallowed my saliva. Lucy swayed

her protruding tongue.

I crunched a hazelnut; a planet afar

crushed into sweet grains.

The ice-cream ball was melting gradually

into a diaphanous ocean. Reflected

in its entropy, our smiles grew

wearier. Nothing in space, except for

an upside-down pyramid, could

stop the helpless expansion or slow down

the light in our eyes from deforming.

If one common thing has to be said about Lucy

and me, say we both grow wizened.

“It’s indeed hard to follow through,”

the old lady concluded to her listener, a dark

cloud swallowing the sun. In shadows,

the distance between us swelled, thirst boomed,

and sound withered. I realized that dogs

must feel lonely, for they look at night skies

longer than any astronomer does.

Once this observation was recorded,

Lucy, the hairy blackhole, barked —

my heart cooled till frozen.