I Move Through You Like A Shooting Star 

Don’t make wishes on shooting stars says my Reader from behind a veil of dried tulip petals, their slivered eyes so delicate that I had forgotten why I’d left home in the first place. I was wondering why I had gone—had sought help without first experiencing distress. Understood. I’m following them to the window where they point at the sky, but I’m too busy memorizing the thin purple veins snaking around their pinkies to see beyond the fluttering shutters but I’ll just say thanks and escape from their tu-lipped gaze. Me and my sister shuffle through the fields, under the same starlight. She either said Did you hear what you wanted? or I hope you’re done being egocentric. When I meet her eyes, they’re full of straggly moss that has softened from years of tearship, but they grow deeper the longer I’m silent and I know I cannot apologize to her, so I bite the insides of my cheeks and try not to pour her my saudade. Why couldn’t I just lie at her feet? When you reveal to them that you have no plan you become disentangled. You watch the immediate unlatch and your hands untwine as they realize that you, yourself, are as lost as they are. Perhaps that’s because they no longer blindly rely on you anymore. I had already wished on a shooting star—could feel its light scouring my lungs, where the hope had originated and since burned up. She unknowingly whispers I remember when we were young and convinced that everything would work out. I could run away and knew that everyone would come looking for me. I miss that easy kind of hope. I refrain from telling her I’ll always come looking for you. I know that’s not the answer she’s looking for nor the one that will make her less afraid, like telling her I’ll go with you anywhere, no matter what when I actually mean I’ve wished on a shooting star, swallowed its fiery mass whole, and am burning up from the inside out for you. She (my sister who is always the one who loves more and doesn’t know how scary that is for me) says I should stop blaming myself—she thinks it’s tearing me apart at the seams and making my ears steam. I am still anxious that I’ll open my mouth and she’ll see the soft excruciating glow beyond my esophagus. I think about our childrenhood when she’d run after me in circles before realizing that following in my footsteps would only lead her to the same tired destination, time and time again. Back then, it was worth more, meaning that if I could go back home knowing what I know now then I could say stop holding onto shooting stars and hold each others hands!