The Institute Woods   The news was an unpredicted eclipse — her light snuffed out nearly two years before. Too young, the memorial read — all the more unsettling to recall our first few trips into the woods at night, into a new kind of darkness we’d both been longing for. I didn’t know where I was going, nor did she — we went there hand in hand, the two of us whispering the names of the stars, inventing our story, how it would sound when all the words were right. Everything dies, I said, and we laughed. So show me your scars, she said, and we laughed, suddenly surrounded by a hovering sparkle of fireflies.                                                                     for Lena     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont Putney, November 2023