THIS HAPPENED TO ME

Your Wish on a Star Can Come True

The secret is in the timing.

artist: samantha cheah/shutterstock

Tell me again that thing you recite to make wishes, Mama
about Stars and brightness and the first ones you see.
Sometimes I watch as Daddy says things
and then you cry.
Do you ask the Stars to fix him?

Are you teaching me, Mama,
that sadness is a destiny because
Stars do not listen?

I think alternatives were not in
your generational DNA,
much like your mother and hers before.

I was like you at first, Mama
as I began my independent life.
What else could I do,
a pupil of your sorrowful teachings.
Your devoted and persistent student through years of
gazing and begging into the shimmering
blue-black ink dome
above my blonde curls.

Until the day I simply
forgot to remember to
look up nightly and sing
our dejected song.
I travelled that tributary for a time.