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Kayla Anderson
The Feeling of Starlight
Bathed in the blush of a raspberry sundown, Estellise leaves flutterby touches across the kitchen nook with every nervous brush of her fingertips. She sweeps her family's evening smiles under the rug, and tucks their leftover laughter into the cupboards.
When all is quiet, she watches the sky, and steps carefully across clay-fired tile, her edges blurring like silk against midnight. She is dimmer than ever, but something celestial lingers in her touch and trails after her every movement.
She spreads her arms wide to a glittering evening and it meets her with a sigh, embracing her with an unpracticed familiarity. In the distant sky, her siblings whisper in glinting secrets, speaking a language she can no longer remember. She listens, waiting, trying to catch hold of how it once felt to laugh and grin with them. How it once felt to shine. There is an absence in her now, memories jarred and set aside in the recesses of her heart.
When she retreats back inside, Estellise runs her fingers through her sleeping daughter’s hair. Each gentle touch unseals old, long-lost wishes and transmutes them into new hopes and new dreams. It is in these moments, when pride pools warm in her chest, that she remembers the feeling of starlight.
To Be Loved
The night filters in slowly, streetlights flickering to life. There is a sound akin to buzzing, the monotone ringing of a corded phone, static zipping along the coiled line. The whirr of tires over asphalt, the hiccuping of every seam and patchy piece of freeway zizzing past. And there is the sound of your mother and father—bickering, laughing, fighting to change the station, searching for anything with a signal as you leave the city behind.
The sky turns and stars gasp alive. Smog dissipates, leaving them to blaze, crisp in pinprick white, and in the distance, Mars shimmers his red eye.
And can't you see how the north star slides along the little dipper, crashing into a basin of dazzling cousins, overflowing into the bigger of pools below?
And oh, Orion! How he stands, fists on hips, belt proudly displayed as you press your cheek to the glass, smearing fingerprints and skinprints along the newly windexed window. And oh, how your father sighs, fist on chin, knowing he will have to clean the window again. But there is a smile in his eye too, as he glances in the rearview mirror to watch you in the same way that you watch the stars.
Your mother, she is reaching for you, catching you just before you are lulled into the warmth of the blazing heater, the dreams of a dancing sky. Her hand is soft in yours, her nails long, and you hope that someday your hands will look like hers, delicate and assured, life etched into every texture.
She sings along to the radio and you doze to the sound. Lamplights strobe by, dashes and em-dashes of light to punctuate your trip. The river reveals itself through parting canyons and cliffs, through whispering and rustling trees. And it is so nice to count the seconds, knowing the light will always come again, to count the stars, knowing they are always there, to hear your parents sing and laugh and chatter.
It is so nice to be loved.
Kayla Anderson is a poet and writer living in Toledo, OH. She is fond of flowers, stars, woodland creatures, and the magic in everyday things. In her free time, she enjoys reading fantasy novels and the works of aspiring writers. Prior to this, she hasn't had any exciting achievements to speak of.
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