In The Absence of Stars

         My dreams are plagued by the face of a striking boy, on the cusp of manhood. In my dreams, he bores into me with eyes as dark as the starless night. But those eyes carry a beautiful light of their own. Something more beautiful than candlelight or starlight or moonlight or sunlight. It is beautiful and as the boy smiles, that light grows and blooms in his eyes and he begins to laugh. And I am engulfed in some foreign feeling when I see this light. When I see this boy. I don’t know what this feeling is. It resides just underneath my skin. It attaches itself to my blushing cheeks. It is buried in my mind and my subconscious aches to release it, to free it. Because she is afraid that someone might see it. See it lurking in depths of my eyes, see the spark before I can. And that they might use it against me. She is afraid that I will cast aside the butterflies, the sparks, the tingling, and the humming that overtake my body whenever he is around and that I will not see it. But I don’t want to see it. And she does not understand. I am too fragile to name this feeling and see it through.