Public Republic

Barbara Sabol

Photo: nathalielaure

Mothers forget to mind the heavens
and miss when daughters
smuggle stars into the house
under white cotton blouses,
mistaking their shine for filigree

until moons of remote planets
send a chill glow from beneath
a closed bedroom door. Nightly,
I examined stars for degrees of luster,
risking the sharpness of each point.

My mother didn’t stop to consider
that comets sizzled
in my blue jean pockets or
the cosmic wind tangling my hair;
that is, until I spun into other orbits.

She spooled me back in
before wheeling away, into a fugue
of white on white: paper, gauze, bed sheets.
Snow in space her palliative. Daily,
she dimmed by life on earth.

She must have known about my map
of the heavens, (canny, minding
all along), asking
      aren’t you coming with me?
I would have given the moon and stars
to pull her back, to float away