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Stars

by Andrea Hollander

“Every day on every blouse, sweater, coat,
on every single dress,” she said. I pictured them

shining from hangers in her closet, dazzling
her drawers. “No closets back then,” she said.

Later, she told me, a few folded into her one satchel
during the weeks she hid in a neighbor’s basement.

Then in a nearby copse one cold night and next
in a tunnel (she didn’t know how long or where)

with no one she knew. “After that,” she said,
“by some miracle,” crowded in a ship’s hold,

where, against her chest, she felt the shape
of one star sewn to the bodice of the last dress

her mother had made, though when she looked, the star
was gone, and she, “too young,” didn’t know why.

Too young myself, I asked only what they were made of.
And did she paste glitter on all six points like the stars

I made from thick paper for the holidays? And why
yellow? Was yellow the only color you could use?

from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#13)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

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