My Mother is a Star

My mother is a falling star. Leaving all that is golden about her in her trail until she is nothing but blackness, or maybe a grey rock that crashes through my window and into my loft. Bleeding out all her glitter on the way down to rock hard ground. Going from something I always imagined to be a warm glow to something harder, more weathered. More enduring.

My mother was a star. She was the bubbling youth, all the freshness of spring and attractiveness of summer moulded into a human being.

My mother is a fallen star. A rock in the back of my loft. But I will always know that it’s a meteor. And that meteor will tell tales of life in the sky, and it will become a star again.

My mother is a star. It is not the iron in her blood, the calcium in her bones, the magnesium in her cells, or the zinc in her nails (’cause these, too, make up a star); but my mother is a star because love makes her shine. She is the star whose face I seek when I close my eyes, the star which keeps my dreams alive. She is the bright light in my dark sky, night after night after night, whose wrinkles and worn hands say that she’d made a light out of a life and a life out of an existence.