© Sauce*Box, Fall 1996. All
rights revert to author.
Eating Stars
by Carol Bachofner
My tongue goes out over the window sill
into the misty evening trying to catch stars, tasty
and sweet and spun together like cotton candy;
I licked stars on those sticky nights of my girlhood,
swallowed them down, wonderful and wickedly thick,
into that place where breath and love begins; clear
nights pulled them in tight against the edge
of heaven where my tongue could not reach; still
I flicked it out as far as it would go should just
one little star arc down out of the grasp of night
and slip into my range; the taste of these was made
more exquisite by their rarity and I longed for more.
But heaven holds them tighter and tighter against
her hem, flouncing them about to tease my
appetite and renew my longing for the nights of
girlhood over the window sill. In the end, I know
I will run along the milky way with my basket,
gather the stars in, and eat them with my hands.
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