No 1: STAR GIRL

PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH

MIA FOSTER

She used to draw them 

Five pointed stars 

The ones you make crooked and lopsided 

Before they teach you to make one perfect everytime 

They guided my hand in the lines of an

Eight pointed star 

Which take you everywhere you want to go 

once you learn how to guide your pencil into the perfect pattern 

Papers and paintings full of them 

The preciseness of these etchings causing me to forget the soft and shaky-handed stars I drew 

I losing the charm and possibility of imperfectness with that

But she preferred the five points

Somehow they were perfect 

Rainbow colored 

All over her hands and ankles 

A practice of confined creativity 

She shared her stars with me 

In repetitive motions, her five points were everywhere 

And every one was different 

In every color gel ink offered

Together we were covered in rainbow constellations 

Shoes and fingers and ankles and thighs tagged with this remembrance of childhood 

The creativity reignited 

The power of the unsteady hand traceable on my own skin 

Outlined stars and the thin lines of colors 

The last lost days of youth and forgotten childhood 

All in a pattern 

Repeated everywhere 

While the colors and shapes have run off me

She has them forever etched in her 

A reminder of unflinching possibility 

Which we all have 

But forget 

I see them still sometimes

She holds inexorable possibility airly in her hands