chronology of a dead star

12:23 am. i plunge sunburnt fingernails into mandarin rind and peel what is left of summer until it lands, in strips of trailer wall, on the ground. swallow wedges of a fever dream sun. or warmed diet coke before it lodges, viscous, in your throat. the mandarin fizzles away in bruised stomach lining, and i am left thirsty. just enough for a snake-scaled tongue to probe the water from my gums, always scraping, scraping. rusted blood thickens with saliva and i drink, too naive to know the difference.

6:53 am. my skin wilts in the shower; desert sand washes away noiselessly in the rain, and i cannot stop watching as the dunes of my shoulders collapse. head, shoulders, knees, toes: the domino effect until i am curled on the floor, painting cracked legs with discount razors. plucking hair follicles until they blossom and swell, stars burning in my thighs. momma whispers in my ear. “you don’t want to be that girl, do you?” i scream no, but pulped mandarin catches in my throat and the shorn hairs reply. they spell out liar, liar on the mildewed tiles.

9:13 am. i am seasick on the school bus, surrounded by a gordian knot of limbs. ellie’s shampoo teases me. i want to run my fingers through her curls, inhale jasmine so i can keep it in the smallest part of me. make myself beautiful like the rest. “braid for me?” she drawls, twiddling a bow. i plait, forgetting the way momma did it, tugging until i was sure she ripped my scalp. i tuck strands gently, let the jasmine vines have just enough room to flower. she grins cheshire when i finish. “thanks! ben lee’ll love this green ribbon.”

when i come home, i rip all the grass from their roots, feeling earth and something raw inside me come loose. i try to weave a ribbon better than ellie’s. i never do.

5:43 pm. thawed shrimp and grits, the wailing of fork on plate. i drag it on the ceramic, then stop. momma quiets in the rocking-chair corner, and i scavenge in the drawers for her makeup. (i tiptoe, because ghosts scare easy with noise.) for the first time, i want to see myself in this chipped mirror. waste away on cowhide eyeshadow, strawberry sherbet blsuh, the adrenaline rush of becoming. and then i am standing there, dandelion at dusk, artemis cloaked in shadows. she is me. trembling, i press two fingers to glossed lips and kiss until the sunset splits itself in two.

7:52 pm. i talk with the pinup girls plastered on pappa’s walls, perfumed updos bobbing as they listen to my story. (pappa left a long time ago, but he’d sure come back if he knew. momma would somersault in her grave.) i ramble like a fresh colt: about how boys smell too sweet under their breath and how the girls offer themselves up like marzipan and how i wish i could like how the sugar crusts on my teeth whenever ben lee calls my name. about the fever dreams of ellie i have, yanking off her green ribbon and breathing oh so close to her minted lips. how badly i want those dreams to come true. the pinup girls nod, the whites of their eyes unblinking, and i see how their cheeks flush like mine. how their hands fumble at the garters.

i drape mothballed sweaters over their bodies.

12:23 am. it’s just me and the coyotes tonight. the night sky tastes cold, pure as the constellations tumble over themselves. the moon wanes into a caladrius, ragged feathers sprinkling moondust to the stars. i pull open the window, straining past mesh screen to look into its eyes. it turns away.

momma once told me that each person is a dead star, fallen to earth to live their life over again. i squint and imagine me, in a past life: soul soaring with a lover, sketching her face in orbit, sea salt eyes, the moonbeam nose. somewhere, a coyote cries, piercing the silence. i wonder if they, too, are yearning for a person they’ve never met.

the caladrius is luminous, the heart of a pearl just out of my reach. maybe i was meant to meet the skies after all. i am burning now, longing reforging until it chokes my sternum, obsidian. orchestra pulsates past my veins; and suddenly, the rebirth of a supernova takes center stage.

the stars tell me she glided past galaxies, phoenix-wing until she met the sun. maybe i killed her. maybe she let me.

light only shines in darkness. so i stand, satellite, plucking holes in the sky in the shape of our names.