Another Poem About Stardust
“Turns out
we may all be made
of stardust, scientists say”
—CNN, 27 July 2017
My son is five months old
when scientists announce
we are all smuggling pieces
of Jupiter in our kneecaps.
Show me a parent anywhere
who is surprised: how else to explain
slivers of a neutron star clipped
from every toenail, old comets
scrubbed from behind
each ear? I watch a galaxy
appear with the milky
bloom of his first tooth.
I knew it would & still
it dazzles me, as if there aren’t
eight billion others
just like him.
~
This poem makes more sense if I tell you I used to hope the baby & I would both fall asleep while I was driving
I’m seven when the phone rings
in my mother's kitchen: my grandfather
has died. I suppose she calls it cancer
for the comfort of an ordinary death;
there is no funeral. At seven I don’t know anything
about any kind of death, ordinary
or otherwise. At thirteen my friend
tells me she has swallowed a bottle
of Tylenol. I don’t know yet
that Tylenol won’t kill you, at least
not quickly, not the way she says she wants
to die, the way she thinks I might understand
because maybe sometimes I want to die, too.
I tell her I don’t. The rest of my life is full
of ordinarily bad things happening,
at nineteen & twenty-four & thirty-two.
I am thirty-six & my daughter is four
the first time she wishes for her own
death. Forgive me, Janis—all these years
I believed having nothing worth
dying for was the same as wanting to live.
Kristina Percy (she/ her) lives on Vancouver Island, BC in the traditional territories of the Ligwiłda’xw people. Neither of her degrees have anything to do with creative writing. Her debut collection, Both True, was a runner up in the 2024 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest & while most of Kristina's work lives in her Gmail drafts, you can also find her on Instagram @__kpwrites.
