By Viviana Sanches, TIWP Student

Let me stare at stars

And wish for the ground

Let there be a revolution, a cause, a battle

Some kind of definition for this disaster

I wish I could fly

Oh how far I would go

Past the forest that lingers past light

Past the sea, yes the sea, salty and free

Past the sun, licking at my scalp and locks of hair

Into the sky, past space and time

Existing in my own little universe

With sweet magnolia trees with soft big purple petals

And with honey and scones

How softly heaven sits upon the heart

How callused it is, how damp and smelling of camp fires and violets

Heaven is the feel of the sun on your arm, a soft breeze occasionally coming to sweep away the building heat

It is the taste of the grass and the shapeless gnats floating and flying in the air, catching the light

The sun is setting now

Soon the stars will come

They will sit lazily in the inky blue and watch as we make our own lights for them

To them, we are the stars

We are gas and fire

In reality, I am a fire

Burning, dancing, growing taller

I am a fire

I sit up on my pedestal and I watch the soot fall

In the this battle of the flame and air

The very oxygen that defines me tries to blow me out

I will not fall

I am a fire

I linger in the warm logs that are thrown away

I stay in the softly glowing embers discovered under the charred wood of a campfire in the morning

I am fire but I want to fly

I want to be the birds on the sky, I don’t want to be trapped to this brittle piece of firewood

But I don’t worry

Everything will reveal it’s self to me

I am fire

And for every spark I throw, for every cell I burn, for every fiber of being thrown at destruction and light and beauty

They each will become wings

I shall fly a thousand times