"The Stars Hesitate" by Scott Burton

 

The Stars Hesitate

The fence learned a new language
before we did.

It stopped being metal
and started being a throat . . .
tightened, trained,
clearing itself every time
a shadow tried to pass through.

They say the land remembers us,
but lately it flinches.
Every footprint is treated
like a confession.
Every horizon
comes with paperwork.

Men in borrowed authority
pace the dust
as if God drew straight lines
and asked them to guard the margins.
As if the wind
needs permission.
As if hunger
has a passport.

A lesson is repeated until it sticks:
some tones trigger pursuit,
some silences are read as proof,
and mercy is never part
of the curriculum.

Somewhere, a mother folds night
around her child
and calls it shelter.
Somewhere, a river practices forgetting
how many names it's swallowed.
Somewhere, a wall pretends
it's a solution
instead of a mirror.

What's left behind is documentation.
A folded square of permission.
A box already marked
by an unblinking eye
hovering where prayer
loses its grammar.

It used to feel like forward.

Now it's rationed,
counted in gestures,
kept by men
who inherited the sky
and can't hear
what suffocates beneath it.

Even the stars hesitate now,
unsure which side of the sky
they're allowed to fall on.
Even the desert is tired
of being asked
to choose.

And still . . .
roots keep doing what lines can't.
They move quietly.
They split stone.
They pass through
what insists on staying whole,
without asking,
and call it life.

~

Scott Burton is a writer and artist from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, whose work is rooted in raw honesty, emotional survival, and the haunting beauty of what lingers long after love or loss. A dreamer by nature and a romantic to a fault, his poetry spans decades and carries the weight of lived experience. Thousands of pieces that speak what couldn't be said out loud. His writing walks the tightrope between ruin and reverence, reaching into themes of longing, emotional vulnerability, missed chances, and the ache of memory. He writes in free verse, often in a stream-of-consciousness style, allowing the poem to breathe and break as a heart does—unpolished, unguarded, and always reaching.

Scott is the author of Forever Is Tomorrow, a deeply personal collection revisited in a newly expanded edition, and the currently releasing ten-volume Chaos series, which chronicles the emotional anatomy of being human. His work isn't interested in perfection—it's about truth, even when the truth hurts. His ongoing creative identity also lives under the moniker ks.bleeds.ink, where art and vulnerability continue to meet on the page. His writing remains a kind of devotion—to love, to memory, to all that lingers after the moment has passed but refuses to let go.

Website:  ScottBurtonAuthor.com
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