a short story anthology

a dream hung on stars

A dreamer longs to share their art with the world, but they aren't sure if they're quite ready to bear their heart.

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04/11/21

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When I was young, and still believed in magic, I had glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling.

I'd leave my blinds open during the day. That way the sunlight would touch the sky that hung above my head. Then, as the night settled in, I'd lie on my back and watch the stars awaken one by one until my ceiling was a sea of celestials. I'd trace constellations with my finger, and tell tales of long lost heroes to my favourite bear as I waited for my mother to come to tuck me in.

When I was young, and still believed in hope, my mother would sing me lullabies.

I didn't always have the heart to ask, because I saw the way her sleepless hours tolled on her skin and I knew that she wore them for me. But sometimes I would ask, and sometimes she'd say yes, and other times she almost didn't.

She'd sit on the edge of my bed, perched on my newly tucked sheets, and sing in this soft voice that filled my heart like a pocket full of kisses. She'd stroke my hair and I'd play with the edges of her skirt.

Sometimes I'd fall asleep listening, and other times I would pretend. Out of all of the songs, there was one that was her favourite. It was a song about boats, and the journey's on which they'd been, and the stories of which they'd tell if they had tongues with which to speak them. It was a song that her mother had once sang to her when she was young. Passed down through generations like second-hand clothing. It fit a little differently, washed out and worn, but well loved to the point where the love had stitched itself into the seams and you could feel it when you put it on. I spent my nights dreaming about the day that it would be my turn to sing that song to a child of my own.

When I grew tall, and learned to draw, that's all that I wanted to do.

I drew squiggles and squaggles, fishes and ishes. I drew shiny smiling suns, cotton-candy clouds, playful patch-furred puppies, and flowers. So many flowers. Daffodils and roses, vanilla and lavender. I must have liked how it felt to draw the curvature of the petals or the shapes of the stems, because they were everywhere in my childhood. They were rooted in my Hilroy notebooks, and grew up the walls of my bedroom. They sprouted up everywhere I touched, as if they planted themselves as a pencil-crayoned trail in my wake. Flowers on my schoolwork, flowers up my arms, flowers by my signature, flowers on my grandpa's sleeping face.

The first time I ever tried to draw a flower was sitting on the floor in the first house my father wasn't in. It was small; my mom and I didn't need much space and didn't have many things. We had a bed each and a couch for the T.V.. I remember that there was a coffee table and a wicker fruit basket that used to sit by the stove, and some paisley throw cushions that we stored with my toys, and a painting by Van Gogh. The painting was called 'Sunflowers,' though I didn't know that at the time. I just knew that the rather simple picture of a vase of yellow flowers made me feel a certain way. I sat on the floor below the painting, and painted a masterpiece of my own right there on the wood. My mom was not pleased.

When I grew tall, and learned to write, I painted flowers again, but this time with words.

I learned how to draw them in your mind. I illustrated with adjectives as pencils and synonyms as my shades. I inked images onto the page with a palette of only twenty-six shapes. I traded in my paintbrush for a pen and colours for vernacular, and I spent hours trying to translate the world into words with me as the interpreter. I took Van Gogh's smock and turned it into ink.

When I stepped back to look at more, I saw how big art really was.

I saw that it's an ocean miles deep, a range of mountains miles long. It's a loom on which we weave our stories of loss and love. Words and shapes are small on their own, but can resound and resonate farther than distance between my heart and yours. It reminded me of how others had touched my heart before. I found a network of dreamers who remember and reclaim what shaped us, and within it I found a world that still believed in magic. A world that has a core of hope, covered by layers of retellings of the stories that were told to us.

When I stopped to look again, I saw where I stood.

I'm standing just beyond the glass, tying my heartstrings to art of mine that I hang behind a curtain-covered window. That's because I'm afraid of what you'll find if I let you open them. I'm not sure if what I've hung will be the same, or what will happen when the light touches them. But my heart is still a ceiling full of stars that might one day glow again.