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I'm surrounded by stars. They cover me completely like an invisible silk veil full of sequins. They touch me, one by one, everywhere-hands, shoulders, lips, ankle hollows, thigh reclusions.
Particular in their presence, like rain, they come also in streams, in storms. Careening, they define more precisely than wind. They enter, cheekbone, breastbone, spine, skull, moving out and in and out, through like threads, like weightless grains of beads in their orbits and rotations, their ritual passages.
They are the luminescence of blood and circuit the body. They are showers of fire filling the dark, myriad spaces of porous bone. What can be nearer to flesh than light?
And I swallow stars. I eat stars. I breathe stars. I survive on stars. They sound precisely, humming in my nose, in my throat, on my tongue.
Stars, stars.
They are above me suspended, drifting, caught in the loom of the elm, similarly enmeshed in my hair. They are below me straight down in the deep. I am immersed in stars. I swim through stars, their swells and currents. I walk on stars. They are less, they are more, even than water even than earth.
They come with immediacy. They are as bound to me as history. No knife, no death can part us.
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Copyright @1997 Pattiann Rogers |
