Siren Stars Alice by Ruth Towne (South Maine)

My cure came at night. But that is coincidence, 
pure and stark as stars. 
                                                     When I was in the mental hospital, 
                                                     the only thing I did was make paper stars. 

​On my first visit, the nurse gave me pen and paper 
so I could learn to make a work like hers, a meadow starred with flowers. 
My pages were as blank as me, vacant except for bright blue rules. 
When I tried to outline what I had in mind, 
my meadow scene was something else entirely–deep wide open space. 
Still, I liked what I was trying. 
​

                                                     So I spent 12-16 hours every day just making paper stars. 
                                                     There was this one girl, and she would steal some of my paper stars. 
                                                     She’d sit next to me and put them in her pocket. 
                                                     But I continued to make the paper stars. 
​
I practiced my craft in different shapes, until I landed on small pentagons. 
I learned to take my pen against the paper, making long, straight lines, 
left to right, low to high. That was when my pages changed 
and became papers full of stars. 

                                                     I was there for one week, and then I got let out. 

A hundred hours passed by, tiny satellites burning out under the night. 

                                                    What did I do with my new freedom? 
                                                    I made more paper stars. 

I learned to make them by habit. And I kept filling pages. 

                                                    I kept making paper stars. 
                                                    I made them until my fingers were sore, 
                                                    I made them until I could no longer fold the paper. 

Sometime, my eyes went blue as the dye of lines, 
and my head took on the shape of a pentagon. 
Eventually, I saw the night was full with stars I had been making. 
Each star gave away to another star, then each star gave itself away. 

They had been rising all that time, 
like so many flowers sprouting out from earth, 
a bright meadow in the sky, making light, 
creating new constellations alongside so many other stars, 
each handworked, handspun, handmade. 

                                                    And then after all of that, I made more paper stars. 




Ruth Towne is an emerging poet. Other poems from her project Resurrection of the Mannequins have been published by the Decadent Review, New Feathers Anthology, Coffin Bell Journal, New Note Poetry, In Parentheses, and the Stonecoast Review’s Staff Spotlight.