Stargazing

I reach up from my pillow with curled fingers,

toward the stars I stuck to my ceiling.

I track my self-made constellations with blurry vision,

my glasses set aside. I remember

Many hours spent standing on a stool or

my bed, working a crick into my neck and

a soreness into my arm as I peel and stick,

peel and stick plastic stars to my ceiling's raiment.

I dragged paper off the walls in strips of

polka dots, spread soft gray-blue paint,

covered it with paintings made by my brush,

or by another deep in the jungle and time.

I filled shelves with shiny books and old books and sketchbooks,

added bright baubles from across the world:

A gypsum flower, a ceramic frog,

butterflies, collected by my great-grandma in Brazil, painstakingly pinned.

I nest my world around me, add pillows

and soft blankets for my cat. A new lamp

casts multicolored mosaics upward

as I read by its light. I click it off, settle

with the cat rumbling on my chest. I watch

my self-made constellations. Remember

soft sand by slow waves in the dark,

watching stars on another continent,

making our own paths among them.