II. Graduation day the sun shines like it knows about suffering, like it knows it’ll be the one to one day put the Earth out of its misery, and when Mrs. Collon pulls me in by the shoulder to tell me about the strength to the backbone of a dream she’s crying because she walks with a limp and knows reality is stronger.
III. On the other side of the country a rarity of a boy with a wishbone and the tail of a falling star for a spine sings his first note. He doesn’t know about the world and the way it’ll break him in half and hope for the longer side, doesn’t yet know people will catch a glimpse of the magic burning through his backbone and make sure he falls, keeps on falling until there’s broken bones and a crater and their dreams that no longer have to be just dreams. When he finds out his mother will tell him, A fallen star is still a star.
IV. Here my grandfather still has all ten of his fingers and he’s pulling my milk tooth with a string and the dusty slam of a door. Later outside he will tell me we’re a nation of dreams, and I’ll believe him because his eyes are the kind of bright I think new born stars are. Later he will teach me to throw the bloody bone onto the rooftop over my head and make a wish, and when I ask him, what happens when I’m older, what happens when all of them fall out?, he’ll shrug his shoulder and smoke his tenth cigarette to keep from saying, You grow up.
V. The universe still hopes and longs – Big Bang and black holes and all – and it’s in flesh and blood. Some days the wind blows hard enough for me to mistake the neighbor for a birthday candle flame and the kids in the back field for dandelion seeds. An afternoon inside the car my mother catches the words on the palm of my hand, messy and stained so I don’t forget, Today we look like wishes, and when she looks at me it’s with the sunken eyes of a fifty year old who can guess the future.
VI. The year my grandfather saws through three of his fingers he makes the perfect doll house. Sometimes a dream looks like the sharp edge of a tooth down a drainpipe, three bloody half-fingers on the floor of your grandfather’s woodshop, and sometimes it looks the way a hand with only two fingers looks like holding a steady saw.
VII. Today the man with a wishbone and a burning spine walks, no limp, through the only city in which no one has ever missed the stars and stands tall and strong behind red curtains, his star tail of a backbone burning, always burning, but still intact.
VIII. If the universe, Big Bang and black holes and all, still dares to dream, then so will I.
