Stardust

Frances Koziar

The sun touches everything
and yet you can’t quite see it. I never knew

how a child’s voice could break up the silence
into manageable chunks until darkness
fell, never knew that being woken up in the morning
wasn’t all bad until I didn’t want
to wake up, never realized that no longer cleaning up after you
would leave my hands restless—itching to work,
to give, to mend—that the silence
would come back and age me, that the future
would look like wrinkles on an old

man. I peer into the void for glimmering
fragments of your destruction, unable to comprehend
how someone so full of life could die
and leave the jaded remnants of parents, still looking
for the stardust
you left behind

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Author’s Commentary: I bought a kitten when I was struggling with depression and a life falling apart, and only one year later, she was hit by a car. This was one of the poems that came out of that grief. She was the light of my life.

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Frances Koziar has publications in 20+ literary magazines, and is seeking an agent for a diverse NA/YA fantasy novel. One of her poems is shortlisted for the Molotov Cocktail Shadow Award Contest, and her poetry has appeared in Snapdragon, Voice of Eve, and Shot Glass Journal. She is a retired (disabled) academic and a social justice advocate and she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Visit her website at https://franceskoziar.wixsite.com/author