This Makes up the Sky: We Are All Falling

by Avery C. Castillo

Today I looked up and saw a star crying across the sky.
How did she know? Did she see me crying, too?
When her tail of salted yellow dust and old
magnesium green light lit across 
my eyelid shield for a moment 
I laughed
because I, too, know
how to color darkness
know what it’s like to burn
and yell and laugh through 
an unspoken language of ash.
I wished upon her falling
for rest 
for less 
from this body
yet I remembered
to be of this body
is to be graceful and grateful 
for this pure burning
can be fruitful and destructive
and she must know 
there is joy
after grief, after, after, after,
she must know her language of color is
real and true because I saw her falling
from a separate darkness while looking up 
and felt her tears of history
attempt to cure me
in a land not meant
for tenderness and silent loving, 
in dark, in light, in the real, in
the way tears can never fall
until we can bear no more until
we bear it all and we cry 
for one another, until we cry
for one, until
we cry, until we cry
until we cry