Dear Stars

Katie Fesuk

From his second grade teacher,

my nephew learns about hieroglyphs,

scrawls from another country and era.

He likes the ones with wings.

“A is a bird,” he says.

“Lots of hieroglyphs are birds.”

Neither time nor place

can change our desire

to see words take flight,

feathered utterances

in a blue expanse of sky,

language turned to ibis and gull.

When he speaks of canabic jars,

I imagine women writing with kohl

on their own faces.

“C is a cup tilted sideways

with tea pouring out.”

Yes, the pouring in, holding heat,

letting go.

He draws a tomb and pyramids,

remembers more: M is an owl.

Cryptic, stormy predator

my mother keeps writing

from spirit world to my own,

hooting in its tree off Hadaway Road.

M for Mary, cosmic love letter

from my daughter’s namesake

flying past the Japanese maple

we planted after she died.

Dear stars, forgive me how much

I comb my child’s long hair,

the color of each good sunset,

its silk in my grip,

her every sound a dove

cupped in hand,

carved into the mountains around us,

bird heartbeat in my palms.

Feathers everywhere I go.

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