collecting minnows in a jerry can to borrow their gleam

Bone dry, I left out the stars like dishes on a counter. I just forgot. I didn't mean to, I'd put everything else delicate away after, I swear. Now mother's upset with me. I might even be grounded. None of them will twinkle tonight, she says. She says they'll just sit there like shapeless stones. It makes me worry. I don't know how to make new ones yet.

3,7-dihydro-3,7-dimethyl-1H-purine-2,6-dione for the weak of heart

I call him the Marquis of Missionary. We met in a narrow therapeutic index, literally chronic first contact. A bitter alkaloid, now he musses up my hair on a daily basis. Ten minutes every morning, ten minutes every night, a lecture comprised of similar compounds, my heels digging into his back. Our wet chemistry excludes quantitative chemical analysis, I don't want children until marriage. His family, caffinated, seem like other basic nitrogen-containing yuppies. Despite their frequently confusing genus, they are dull, lacking in suffix. I don't like spending time with them, I would rather derive my pleasure down the coast to our cabin, our celluloid haven.