The Institute Woods   The news was an unpredicted eclipse — her light gone out nearly two years before. Too soon, the memorial said — 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, she said, and we laughed. Show me your scars, I said, and we laughed, suddenly surrounded by a slow-dancing sparkle of fireflies.                                                                     for Lena     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont Putney, November 2023