Member Poem

Part I: Sorrowful Stars
I look around, what an unfamiliar world that stands before me.

This is the first moment of serenity I’ve felt. But it’s ominous and agonizing,
Not even the melodic chorus of crickets can distract me from that.
I realize now that I’ve never felt so anxious and eerily alone. Alone with myself.
Alone with my thoughts. Alone with my gradually slowing heart.

I peer up to the glistening stars,
What a contrast they provide against the pitch black, midnight sky.
The stars know how to shine, why don’t I?
The stars know why they’re here, why don’t I?
The moon knows how to be still, why don’t I?

The stars, to me they are only white dots in the sky, but up close they’re so much more.
They’re constantly changing and evolving.
And oh, what a complex process it was for them to come to be.
But I am only a lost girl, somebody who knows nothing of which shooting stars to follow.
I’m only somebody who can stare mystified and overwhelmed as the radiant lights streak across the sky. I can only wonder if they ever land or disintegrate to nothing but dust.
So many wrong shooting stars to follow, so many leading nowhere,
Yet so many leading to a destination.
However am I supposed to choose the right ones?
How do I know if I’ve chosen the correct ones?
Who is to judge whether where you end up is somewhere or not?

Still I stare up into the night, the stars so perfectly out of line.
I look inside myself, the stars out of line in my life aren’t beautiful, they are only quarrelsome.
What will it take to put the stars back in line?
Must I move a mountain?
Walk 1,000 miles with broken calves?
Swim to the surface of the ocean with a weight around my ankle?
The crickets cease their chirping and the moon seems to grow larger and brighter.
Then the breeze rustles through the trees.
“Love,” it rasps. Is that what I’m without? Love? Is that what I need?
Can love put the stars back in line?

Part II: Serene Stars

I look up to the sky, a vast darkness closing in around the earth.

It’s a cage surrounding us, the chains that bind us, it limits our freedom,
Yet it’s gorgeous and serene.

The darkness in itself isn’t a marvel,
But the place where the stars meet the sky,
Where the light meets the darkness,
That’s where the true beauty lies.
The longer I peer into the darkness, the more stars I see.
Their arrangement is not geometric in any way, they’re sporadic, they’re in varying sizes,
Some are in clusters, some are by themselves.

It’s only now that I realize the stars aren’t supposed to be in line;
Their imperfections are what make them elegant.
Stars in line would be boring.
I was striving for something to make my life perfect,
But it’s our imperfections and our scars that make us exactly who we are.

I am perfect just the way I am.

I am a wonderful mess.
I am free to be me.
I am stars out of line.