Closer to the Stars, by Michelle Valois

Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1889

​Closer to the Stars

“Through the iron-barred window I can make out a square of wheat in an enclosure.”
Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo

blue swirls & white whirls, humanity dwarfed by a night sky on fire and a terrible longing for kindness & community & sanity – black tongue & yellow flames, a poor man grounded in chains, but closer to the stars than anyone before or since; closer than Icarus ever got; closer than the dusk; closer than my own demons are to the parts of me afraid to let go because then I would fall upward and out of myself, and who would I be without my suffering?

rise up from the dead earth where you lay buried in your fetters, all you mountain girls and zombie girls, wounded angels and lost sailors – come, let’s sit together by the window of this ancestral asylum and dream of flying to the stars with Vincent, and if we ever tell our tale we will paint the bars because we can finally see the bars

Michelle Valois

Michelle Valois lives in Massachusetts and teaches at a community college. Her work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Brevity, Pank, The Baltimore Review, The Florida Review, and others. Her chapbook My Found Vocabulary was published in 2017 (Aldrich).