Natalie Richardson

\tr/hen I Was Little

by Natalie Richardson

When I was little I adopted stars, and named them to match my stuffed animals. I believed everywish I conjured would come true-l knew

those stars personally. As I watched them totter across the sky I imagined they were crawling onward to carry out mywishes. If my eyes stayed transfixed long enough I could see them skinny-dip on the horizon. I wished on stars that my Dad could light up my mother again, like sun bathing the moon. But there's something deceiving about airplanes at night. How pinpricks of childhood fantasies sewn into midnight's blanket are only public transportation. Headlights ignite my ignorance in night skies-burning like the candle

wax that splattered my bedroom floor. When I was alone, there was nothing more captivating than watching flames latch onto jet streams of parent arguments. Fire lurching for a snake of air, my ear pressed against floorboards that shook with every stinging battle from below. I've developed a habit of counting quarrels and giving them destinations. "Where's the TV remote?" A commuter jet to Ft. Wayne, IN. "What do you even do on those business trips?" A streamline jet to Queens, NY. "Maybe we should take a break." A747 to Florence, Italy.