I watch the stars with everyone else but destroy them on my own, by Shannon Waite

By the Light of the Stars, by Richard Yonkers (USA) between 1919 and 1944

I watch the stars with everyone else but destroy them on my own

The sky had to detonate 
like that so I could twist stars 
between my fingers, into 
my palms, against my skin. 

Now I stand underneath the
fallout’s center, where I am 
an explanation. Debris 
kisses me, reflections exchange 
me, and everyone takes me. 

(But) Between where the sea nuzzles 
the sky, we all misbehave. 

Here we are centered, with closed
knuckles, sharp lines, a journey 
sewed shut. We are where we get 
ourselves tangled in fishing line, 
feathered bait dipped just beneath 
the surface - the world barely 
skimming the top. We are wild

in the way that silence is
wild, and still somehow convinced 
that voices will be what chase 
us from this flood. The heavens

are still smashed against my hands
where they feel soft, underneath 
the wreckage toft and I will
let their heat stain me while I 
sink the moon and everyone (watches).
 
Shannon Waite

Shannon Waite is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher turned Proposal Writer and Marketing Coordinator in Metro Detroit. She's currently earning her third degree, this one in Creative Writing, at Oakland University. Her fiction has appeared in PANK and is forthcoming in Oakland Arts Review.