Streetlight Stars

By Nick Zeleske

I was born below a thousand streetlight stars
that stained the night electric grey. They stretched
a graveyard of shadows across the cracked glass window
of my bedroom. As they flickered to a pulsing beat,
I made a wish on every one. One thousand lights,
one thousand wishes.

My mother warned me they wouldn’t come true,
she’d made those wishes before. But I was swallowed
by the paraffin light, lulled into a comfortable complacency
that anchored me to the asphalt. I’ve never stopped wishing
on those manmade stars.

I wandered into the cubicle labyrinth spread across the city
like veins. I counted down minutes and seconds until one day
I opened my eyes and years had passed. My skin withered
on my bones, my bones weakened in my skin, and the corridor
of lights that ran down the streets seemed to promise that
it wasn’t time wasted.

And so last night, under the freshly built freeway, I carved
my name into a concrete canvas, so when this city
becomes my gravestone, the lights will still remember me.
They are the only lights I’ve ever known, and I am their moth,
burning slowly inside them.