Paige Sullivan

To the girl who insisted she saw a shooting star

flash across the sky,
who said, No really, I saw it.
I swear to god, a shooting star,
who was possibly tipsy or high,
lying on her stomach on a quilt
spread across the park lawn,
her calves touching the calves
of the boy lying next to her,
who was hers, or who she hoped
would be. I didn’t tell you,
but I believed you, trusted
the probable in the implausible.
The next morning my dog nosed
the grass, a small spider rethreaded
itself up to the branches above us.
Each pre-dawn outing I check on
Orion’s Belt, the one familiar buoy
in the dark sea of sky, a party trick:
to know enough about something
to pass for understanding. The flickering
one on the tree line—a planet, right?—
and then a quick beam, a little motion—
stunned with the leash looped on my wrist,
no one but an indifferent dog, no you
to lock eyes with, say I saw it, it was real,
and as if on cue, the sprinklers rose
from the mulch, hissed over the bushes,
the moment dissolved, another star
crept its way toward the horizon.

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Paige Sullivan is a poet and writer living in Atlanta. A graduate of the creative writing programs at Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University, her work has appeared or will soon appear in Harpur Palate, Puerto del Sol, Cherry Tree and other journals.