I found a star in you.

there are so many stars in you
they’re all spectacular

and they all make me think
about the cables around our wrists
souls of gravity
orbit
life;
because I remember you
and water remembers
and we share so much of it.

blood. tears;
ink ink ink ink ink
stardust. constellations;
ink ink ink ink ink
plastic. wires;
ink

across the sheets

spanning over the galaxy
milky way gone the shade of mocha
dark and encompassing
in the way ink does
and just.

You hold a star
like you would a glass baseball.

You hold it to the moon first, wires around your neck and looping around my torso, surrounding us like a sea of snakes— the temptation of sin. I watch you; on the top of the hill, you stand with the sun in your left palm and a large, metal bat in your right hand. The sky’s dark; you’ve robbed it of its fragile light. In the distance your worries burn with our larceny, and the screams permeate the air. On occasion, sparks from snapped wires and cables with torch the air with the wish to replace. To belong.

Then you hold it to the distant stars: look at your kin, watch them shatter, and know that someday I will hop upon the life you’ve allowed here to catch you and break you too. I watch with my ears covered – the shrill of screams is the untuned radio that I wish to silence at night, that you will silence – as the sun spins and starts to glow. A refusal.

I move closer to you, stepping over strings and wires and dangerous electricity. But around you is a barrier of heat; hotter than any cut cables will be, hotter than the sparks I spit, hotter than the boiling of water that you’ve dunked yourself into. How do you live, I want to say, but it’s obvious from the way light bounces off your skin like it’s scared of you, the way you brush the sound away from your ears. You live and you breathe in the way that a star collapsing would; drowning on itself, and desperately trying to shield the life you’ve created from your own rays.

Then you turn to me.

And you smile, throw a piece of worn paper at my form, and as soon as you see I have caught it through the flaking cables and wires all around us, your arm swings. Wide and graceful, like something we have dreamed about—

One of us is imagining. Wondering.
The other was reminiscing. Nostalgic.

There goes the star, I think. There goes the glass baseball. There goes it all. There goes the universe, there goes our tether; there goes the water choking you, and there go the cables.

you swing.

You swing unlike a person playing baseball would. Instead, you swing like you were born to hit spheres across the ground; you swing like the habit of aiming for targets miles away from you is imbedded in your everything. You swing like you’re bored. You swing like you’re tired.

But the star still shatters. Splinters, disintegrates, gone gone gone.

You really just did that.

Yeah, I… man, that was funny.

It was so fucking bright.

It was the sun, Mel.

Well yeah, sure, but still. Didn’t expect that.

My hands are loose at my side. They’re no longer shackled.

Thanks.

Of course.

You didn’t do it for me.

No, no, of course not. You’re not the only one watching.

I can’t see the others.

Well, you set the bottom of the bat on the grass, leaning your weight on it. The sky is still dark, the screaming is still piercing, but I wave my hands at my ears and it dulls. I understand how you live, now. I didn’t expect you to. I don’t think you care about them.

… Right.

Then you start to shrink.

Sophia?

The screams in the distance fade. They fade. Where have they gone? Why aren’t they screaming anymore? I, I, I—

Sophia. Sophia. What—

Godammit.

Why is no one screaming? They scream for the sun. Why aren’t they screaming for you, why aren’t they, they, they—

You shrink. Then you glow. You glow so, so bright. Brighter than the sun.

Then, I am screaming. Deep, guttural, from the throat, from the heart, from the veins. From whatever, from everything.

And then you drop to the ground. There’s a thud.

The grass around you immediately lights aflame; from them are born coils, long and like the cables from before, and they’re dragging me in; you are at my feet, and around me I see my family. My friends. Whoever. They’re all screaming, all screaming so loud, and I can’t wave them away this time; but even still, when you speak, your voice is louder than them all.

Hey, Mel.

What the fuck happened to you? What in the—

Here. Take the bat.

A bat falls into my hands, and I drop with the weight; I was caught off guard. But after shifting the weapon from hand to hand, I’m able to stand upright with it.

What do you want me to do?

Mmmm. Hold me.

I pick you up. You burn, like a wildfire— like you must be noticed somehow, like you’re burning with something deep inside you, like you couldn’t scream when you were able to, like you had a duty that you had to fulfill before you could think about shouting out your heart.

I hold the sun like I would a glass baseball; to the moon first, I sigh, and then to the distant stars, and then to the people watching. After that, I toss you into the night sky, hearing the screaming.

I swing, unlike the way a person playing baseball would. I swing like I’m used to feathers and birdies instead of stars, like I would rather be in the tunnels in a public park with rubber on my knuckles and mesh in my sight. I swing without registering the weight of the bat, but I hit you nevertheless.

You explode.

You are so many colors, I think. You’re bright, but more than that, you’re colorful. You’re gold and teal, but you’re also a deep magenta and some new universe I’ve never seen before that looks somewhat close to purple. You’re colorblind and I’m blind, you’re my mind and I’m your eyes. You think and I see, you burst and I weep, and just like that you’re gone.

I unfold the piece of paper you tossed to me.

Have Some Blue.

I watch the cables of fire on the hill disappear, and the noose around my neck is gone. Temporarily.

I found a star in you.

I start to shrink. I start to glow.