eyes like multiverses | Teen Ink

eyes like multiverses MAG

June 25, 2016
By addictwithapen PLATINUM, Norfolk, Virginia
addictwithapen PLATINUM, Norfolk, Virginia
21 articles 14 photos 163 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I'm at it again as an addict with a pen." - twenty one pilots, addict with a pen


I.

we’re sitting on the edge of an
overturned rain barrel.
he is looking at the sky
and i am looking at him.
“it’s beautiful,” he says,
face turned upwards.

i nod.

the sky reflected in his eyes is black and vast and starry,
a singularity in his pupils,
a multiverse in his retinas.
the moonlight plays across his skin, and
his lips are slightly parted, as if he’s
hoping to taste the stardust,
hoping for it to explode like pop rocks
across his tongue.

“look,” he says. “andronmeda.”
his finger traces
the space between the stars,
painting an abstract connection.
“pisces.”
he looks over at me,
smiles
slantedly, recklessly,
before he reaches out and takes my arm.
i yelp, panicking, but he’s ignoring me.
he’s taking a sharpie and connecting the sunspots
that dot my skin like
cookie crumbs in milk.
thin black lines crisscross my arm.

“ursa minor.”

II.

“all things come from stardust,
and to stardust all things return.”

he is stardust now.

he is (was)
a comet, (or a meteor, i never quite
understood the difference.)
he is (was)
a supernova,
exploding into colors that seared
the inside of my eyelids.
he is (was)
a black hole
making obsolete my gravity
so i
fell
into
him
and
all
that
he
is.

(was.)

III.

sitting in science class, i bite my tongue.
i clench my hands into white knuckled fists.
the teacher points at the whiteboard; she
traces the shapes of the stars and says their names.

traces his stars.

she has no right.

she has no right to trace his stars, to speak their names
in the same way he did (except different, so so different).

shehasnorightshehasnorightshehasno-

they send me home early, something about a nervous breakdown.

IV.

i’m sitting on the edge of an
overturned rain barrel,
and i’m looking at the sky,
and i’m realizing that it does not belong to me.

andromeda does not belong to me, and
pisces does not belong to me, and
ursa minor does not belong to me.

because i never really looked at the sky, did i?
the only sky i saw
was reflected in his eyes.
the only moon i saw
was shining inside his skin.

now that he is stardust
i see the heavens for what they really are.
molecules.
atoms.
scattered clumps of dust.
the constellations don’t exist.
they are nothing but a construct,
a heavy-handed fairy tale
created by presumptuous humans with their
sharp pencils, playing connect-the-dots.

i didn’t wash my arm after the last time
he traced the constellations between my sunspots,
but it faded over time nonetheless.
just like all things fade
until there’s nothing left but memories of
lips that taste like stardust,
eyes that shine like multiverses.


The author's comments:

This poem spilled out of me in a few breathless minutes, leaving me staring at the screen and wondering who I had briefly become. It was unnerving, yes, but writing is like that. You have to trust people you don't even know, strangers who have somehow gained access to the inside of your head and are flinging at you words and images you don't know the meanings of. You have to trust them, and let them tell their story.

That's what it is to be a writer.


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This article has 4 comments.


on Apr. 9 2017 at 8:16 pm
addictwithapen PLATINUM, Norfolk, Virginia
21 articles 14 photos 163 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I'm at it again as an addict with a pen." - twenty one pilots, addict with a pen

Thanks so much for the feedback. I will keep what you said in mind while editing this.

hwoodruff98 said...
on Apr. 9 2017 at 2:44 pm
hwoodruff98, Lititz, Pennsylvania
0 articles 0 photos 55 comments

Favorite Quote:
"In a gentle way, you can shake the world." -Mahatma Gandhi

"What will your verse be?" -Dead Poets Society

"Write drunk, edit sober." -Ernest Hemingway

Wow, I absolutely love this poem as well. You have a lot of talent with words. The second part of this impacted me especially with the is/was dynamic. That being said, there were a couple of spots in which I was personally shaken from my trance. In part I, the way his smile is described as reckless didn't make much sense given the context of the setting and his actions. Additionally, what is stardust in this poem? I think there is a bit of a mixed metaphor in here. Stardust seems to be representative of death or people who have died, because the speaker says "he is stardust now." However, the speaker also says his lips taste like stardust. However, I don't think she means to say he tasted like death. So, I'd just say to be careful with the analogies. The third part of this poem is also different stylistically, which could be representative of the speaker's mental state after the boy's death, but it is jarring for the reader. Specifically, "sitting in science class" and "something about a nervous breakdown" don't really fit with the more poetic language and flow of the poem. Over all, I think this was a wonderful poem. I think the turn at the end, the speaker's realization, is really what makes the whole poem stand out. Well done.

on Jun. 30 2016 at 4:37 pm
addictwithapen PLATINUM, Norfolk, Virginia
21 articles 14 photos 163 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I'm at it again as an addict with a pen." - twenty one pilots, addict with a pen

Thank you so much. I think he's dead, but really it's up to the reader to decide how they want to interpret it. :)

j2250 DIAMOND said...
on Jun. 29 2016 at 7:21 pm
j2250 DIAMOND, North Andover, Massachusetts
74 articles 9 photos 37 comments
Wow. This is incredible. I like the constellation imagery. I'm curious as to if this boy is still alive because you refer him to stardust and use "was" to define him. It seems as if his presence has been washed away, but left remnants. Well done.