The earliest hanzi, stars are a language to master before dawn. Quick – before they trickle away, leaving everything hushed and open-mouthed. This is why your fingers come together in a woven calligraphy, to catch and caress prayers like polished stones. Your fingers know the twinkling leaves in the trees around you are synonyms for starlight. Or the deep stones softly breathing against your ear as you lie sprawled on your back.
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The stars have made words which move the way that fingers smooth out billowing silk. They have fashioned words which move like palms across a loved one’s breast. If sparks were the touch of fingers on skin, they would be those blue flints. Oh, the slowness in the hands. His lifting chest and her arching spine flow together, become the whispered flint-blue hints which laugh or go oh! deep in the well of night.
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The stars are letters from ancient, unread books. The cold warmth of the stars is in that moment after you close your children’s storybook and tuck them in. One of the stars’ fables is that they are smashed egg shells children forgot to pick up. Mothers tut-tut like hundreds of crickets, or tall conifers bickering in a wind.
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Stars are wounds in the gaping nothing, letting in too much memory. Stars are the healing light of water dripping off fingers. Even God’s fingers. When our faces are upturned, we soften under their gaze; then stars are nipples nuzzled against the face of the world. Starlight lies in the moment between touching and not touching. They dream us into knowing we come from God. They have stared deeply into God’s eyes.
Written in celebration of night skies and the first supermoon since 1948.
A prince with dignity and determination
Prince Ngarambe’s goals are to become Rwanda’s first transgender model and to uplift the country’s youth
The EFF’s principles are unshakeable
Unlike the ANC, the core values of the freedom fighters do not change with each leader it elects
