Two spots still open in our nuts and bolts “how to move from draft to finished book” Plotting for Pantsers workshop on Tuesday, October 3, 6-9:30 pm CT. To register, and to check out our other two remaining November workshops, please click and scroll down. I’d love to see you in the zoom room!

I grew up waaaay out in the country in upstate New York, no town, no streetlights, nada. At night the sky glittered with thousands of stars. The Milky Way. The Big Dipper. Orion. Once in a while the Northern Lights.

If I stared at the sky long enough, stars were suddenly not stars but portals into another world. Pinpricks punched into black paper, that if somehow I could peer into would bring answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask.

Sincerely, the Sky, by David Hernandez

Yes, I see you down there
looking up into my vastness.

What are you hoping
to find on my vacant face,

there within the margins
of telephone wires?

You should know I am only
bright blue now because of physics:

molecules break and scatter
my light from the sun

more than any other color.
You know my variations—

azure at noon, navy by midnight.
How often I find you

then on your patio, pajamaed
and distressed, head thrown

back so your eyes can pick apart
not the darker version of myself

but the carousel of stars.
To you I am merely background.

You barely hear my voice.
Remember I am most vibrant

when air breaks my light.
Do something with your brokenness.

Click here for more information about poet and writer David Hernandez.

alisonmcghee.com

My podcast: Words by Winter