Caroline Shepherd
girlplanet
i am unconvinced by space
and you can tell it I said so
the blight of growing up a hellishly tall girl is that I am resentful
when not the biggest thing in the room
and although I have never been in a room with space it makes itself known to me
a cosmic intrusion, through closed windows and open doors
hovering up there with its arms out
living in the suburbs I am comforted by light pollution
electricity, our living noise, drowns out stars and meteors
but that incorrigible darkness presses on the houses I live and love in
proving itself
that really I am inconsequential and always have been
while it remains the giant that holds us here
blank spaces echoing out
punctuated by great planets moons the sun
when I leave the suburbs I am confronted by the victory party
parades of exploding light showing off those heavenly assets
and I take stupid primal joy in knowing that all that light is dead and I’m here
small and furious and living
my heart a lump of glittering blood in my chest
ignorant, echoing through me
rocket
you and me like that sparkly feeling when you were under ten and it was your birthday
meaning it was the best day of the year and also of all time
awake and older, for the first few seconds lying still,
really expecting to have shed your skin in the night, radiant beast
this, finally, being the year you become the light
you and me being that year
you and me being the light
Caroline Shepherd is an English major who has been published in Signals, Mimicry and Starling, and lives in Wellington. She loves a good pear and cannot rollerblade.