We Are Stardust

I killed a star last night. With my fist
I threw a rope, summoned
a lasso and snatched

him from the sky.

I dragged him through salt
water and with him
pierced the four corners of the earth.

But he would not die, so with all my might
I cast him back into the night
sky. And into a small, dense
star he collided. “Excuse me!”

Big Star chirped, “I was thrust into you by
another. ” Little Star replied with a giggle, “Together
we’ll light new meaning to the sky.”

A stellar merger, a galactical rarity, a red nova swallowed by a bitter
taste of envy, my rope tied tight, I dragged
the new fireball back down to me.

“What is in you, Big Star, not in me? You have no eyes mirroring
your twinkle, no lips reminding you of how wondrous
you are. You are but a sparkle grasping

imaginations. Aren’t we, just we?” I asked.

Big Star sighed. “If I am you, why are you not me?”

Good question.

“You have not seen me,” I replied. “You
have not seen my longing.”

Big Star answered, “I see it
now but, still, I am not you.”

That is all Big Star said. His twinkle did not grow, nor
shrink, nor command my heart. In the night
he was only a portion of illumination.

I thought of throwing him back into the sky, far
away from me. But above waited more little
stars looking down with smirks of surety.

So I dragged the star to a place I, myself
was afraid of. A place more fearful than the dried
depths of my heart and unfound dimensions of mind,

a place where pompous mouths and little brains
meet and flourish in dead smells and colors
as muted as smoke in the sky.

I pulled Big Star into a cypress
swamp and let the crocodiles snap at him.

I let the mosquitoes pierce him. Their needles
were bent by his rocks.

I let the purple gallinule laugh at him, their beauty
unrivaled in the wet forestlands.

But Big Star was brighter than them and only sighed.

The woodpeckers would not peck him. The snakes
would not wrap around him. The swamp was defeated.

So I dragged Big Star into a tropical rainforest.

He merely sighed as we went layer by layer inside.

Like lemon meringue pie
each flavor melted into one taste.

The emergent trees only massaged Big Star, their smooth
trunks like the blanket of night.

In the upper canopy he touched
a wealth of life and wondered why people
wish upon falling friends.

I dragged him past the fruit basket
into the lower canopy. He began
to fizzle with dampness and wheeze
without oxygen.

He became a smaller piece of illumination, what he had just
enveloped, a white dwarf, now a formless
shadow in shade, not grand, nor mighty—quite unfit for posing.

Weary from pulling, I gave a final tug.

Together we landed on the forest
floor where the termites, earthworms
and fungi claimed Big Star as their own.

And shallow roots of trees swallowed the star’s remains.

And I felt free from the star for a moment.

©Margery Hannah 2006-2025. Follow the author here.