Prose poetry by Julia Kantić
Dead Stars Still Burn
Do you see the embers? And the shadows they cast on the surface — whether it be hill or rock or rock or hill or sea. The hope they give as they streak across the sky — meteorites they say — but even small children know better and reach for them. So easy it is to say that our star is living and the others are dead, billions of years gone, or time in portions we cannot understand; but the stars are burning now for us. The innocents see it. Just as Sol scorches our skins. They smoulder through our romantic nights, they bewitch and bewilder and sing and call; the blush, the flare, the scald of them woven into story and poetry through all styles and times. The words ignite and glow with the stars and live longer than a human span. Unless we leave our light up in the sky for all to see, and we share our spark with the dark and light alike, pulse to the beat of the rhythm of individual hearts that shout their steps to another or another or another, not important how many, just that the love was willing and honest given, offered in perpetuity, not on a loan, that it might shine as the stars do through history — connect us with their dead light to ancestors of long ago, to lost bereaved lovers, and mothers with children gone, all living in their time as the stars did. Look at the night sky, cleared of clouds and false human lights. We do not burn alone.
Do you see the embers? And the shadows they cast on the surface — whether it be hill or rock or rock or hill or sea. The hope they give as they streak across the sky — meteorites they say — but even small children know better and reach for them. So easy it is to say that our star is living and the others are dead, billions of years gone, or time in portions we cannot understand; but the stars are burning now for us. The innocents see it. Just as Sol scorches our skins. They smoulder through our romantic nights, they bewitch and bewilder and sing and call; the blush, the flare, the scald of them woven into story and poetry through all styles and times. The words ignite and glow with the stars and live longer than a human span. Unless we leave our light up in the sky for all to see, and we share our spark with the dark and light alike, pulse to the beat of the rhythm of individual hearts that shout their steps to another or another or another, not important how many, just that the love was willing and honest given, offered in perpetuity, not on a loan, that it might shine as the stars do through history — connect us with their dead light to ancestors of long ago, to lost bereaved lovers, and mothers with children gone, all living in their time as the stars did. Look at the night sky, cleared of clouds and false human lights. We do not burn alone.
Julia Kantić is a writer and web developer who spends her time between England, France and Croatia. This sounds glamorous but isn’t. The name Julia rhymes with ‘peculiar'—take from that what you will. She lurks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/peculiarjulia
