Jennifer R Edwards

Star Slumber Party

Mist moves in like sweeping arms,
with stars blinking through.
They have come as close as they can.
Invisible all day, like us, moving blindly and busy
with beautiful, secretive work. Asking for nothing.
Our admiration makes them shine.
Nobody taught me all their ancient names.
I impart rudimentary stories of battles and bullshit.
This world’s brutal and big.
But not tonight. This is our New England city
wood-lined backyard, our darkened screen
of sky with its replayed movie of summer days.
His friends have gone home. Acorns fall on the
trampoline while we jump. The fire pit flares
its orange dress. Everything stays up late
looping night noises. Frogs rustle reeds, deliriously
chirping; knowing my son will catch them again.
I forget every wish I make on stars.
I change my mind. The galaxy gives
surprising defense mechanisms.
All the time they must be used.

Finally, the afternoon has dissolved into
murky memory. Tonight, even as I yelled
at my son I was forgiving him. Even before
I pulled the floating frog from the kiddie pool,
grabbing the bloated olive belly as if it had maybe
just gone under, its limp legs extending
into a final fruitless push off. Maybe before
I watched a horrible limpness take root in my
son’s stooping frame, his mouth suddenly slack
and shamed, his voice a reed cracking, from grief,
or puberty, saying they had taken it out, the frog
must have jumped back in and they can breathe
under water, can’t they? A part of him always thinking
about mermaids, and gemstones and impossible things.
His eyes swimming, swimming, in muddlement
so deep I might never pull him out. It died because
he loved it the wrong way. I don’t want him to stop
believing something can love him back just as fiercely.
His face beautiful, blinking, manly, moonish.
Love is making me brutal.

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Jennifer R Edwards' Unsymmetrical Body (FLP), was an Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention, First Horizon Finalist and BAC Julia Ward Howe Award Finalist. She's received Pushcart and BOTN noms, the NEPC Amy Lowell Prize and conference fellowships. She's a Speech-language pathologist and MFA candidate at Bennington. Read her poems in Beaver Magazine, RHINO, ELJ, MER, One Art, Terrain and https://linktr.ee/JenEdwards @JenEdwards8  X Jennife00420145.