Ode to starlight by Hilary Tam

Tell me how–

How you breathe azure into the sky and purity into dusk, how mothballs frame your face like fireflies.

Ma, she is so lovely in luminescence– I want to hold her shadow in my palms, ribcage and irises and all

Daughter of Asteria, lover of light; 

Count the dips and curves of the city. Pocket her metaphors for grief, for beauty;

Steal the twilight.

For how many more will we have? Until she takes my hand we are no more than particles and dust.  

Before we run, exhaling heavens, time drips like dew. 

But you should see how bright her darkness is, ma–  I am dancing with constellations,

Downing nebulas like nectar.

In her starlight we are 

eternal. Golden. 

Perpetual dreamscapes. Reborn.

She casts her words as ripples in moonglow, syllables leaving her tongue like monarchs in late autumn–

Maybe to love is to be free. To let the current of her words carry me and drown in nightfall.

The poems write themselves–

Ink drips from starlight and the four-lettered words spell infinite, glittering like

Pearls on lovers’ napes.

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Hilary Tam is a high school student from Hong Kong. Her work is published in Fahmidan journal, the graveyard zine and more. In her free time she can be found listening to music, playing (and losing at) sternhalma, poring over literary magazines or taking long walks. She is on twitter @hilary_pdf.