Andromeda

when you were just a girl i marched you through the stars
and in so doing, sealed your fate between them,
two inches of glass between you and oblivion.

as you grew your back straightened, shoulders squared,
your eyes hardened to gunmetal and my princess
became a dreadnought.

i carved that smile into your face,
so terrible and beautiful to make men tremble
and my genetics turned your bones to stone.

when you were barely a woman i pushed you into the stars
where you died your first death admist corpses
who had given up before you. you came back from the fire
a monument to sacrifice, made of molten bones,
bent but unbroken.

i was there in every pair of hands
that pinned those honours to your skeleton
i was there, my hope, my pride, in every tremor
through phantom fingertips that welded metal stars
to your bullet scars.

my girl the warship, i thought,
my girl the un-sunken.

when i was an old woman i lost you to the stars.
you breathed in oblivion and smiled
that wretched smile, knife-carved and cracking,
left me the proud mother of a collapsing sun
reaching through the glass for a hand you never asked me to take

and grasping nothing but stardust.