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We are temporally bound in a galaxy where we are not the starlight:

burning in a bath of ice, we twinkle but we are not the starlight.

Echoed against a black cloth, like constellations of drowned dreams

our memories are lost to myth because we are not the starlight.

Like a twilight patchwork quilt on which stars are stitched to threadbare seams,

we cannot wake the sleeping sun because we are not the starlight.

Among the tiptoeing waves are sweet slivers of silver moonlit beams

that dare us mortals to fathom infinity since we are not the starlight.

A boat ripples through the cosmos, leaving darkness in its streams;

we are drifting on lunar swells even though we are not the starlight.

Way out in that nebulous space, a bright star gleams

but by the strange order of the universe, we are not the starlight.

Like glimmering Christmas lights in a winter’s extremes

I may be a Warrior of Mars, but we are not the starlight.

Natalee Martino

Natalee Martino is graduating this spring with degrees in English Literature, Creative Writing, and Italian.  She plans to attend graduate school at Northern Arizona University when she returns from studying abroad in Siena, Italy, and hopes to work in the publishing and editing industry after earning her M.F.A. in Creative Writing.  This Slytherin enjoys watching Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and playing games from The Legend of Zelda series.