To say I don’t like children is an understatement. As my boyfriend so aptly put it when explaining to friends, “You know that face you make when you take a sip of water and find out it’s vodka? That’s her face around kids.”
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The hankering for fame like no other started as early as I can remember. I was an only child, so the center of attention simply by default, and I thrived most in climates where I was the focal point of the room. By four or five, I was already destined to be a Rockette at best, a groupie at worst, always discovered by my parents moving wildly in the center of some dance floor filled with drunk adults.
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My father stood beside the wilted orange tiger lilies
on the side of our house. So small and fragile
compared to the grand spectacle in the sky.
A meteor shower, a celestial trajectory of cosmic
debris. Thousands, bright and fast, cascaded
from the infinite galaxy to Earth.
Earth, where my father and I stood, awestruck.
I squinted to take it all in, despite my poor vision.
“You’ll never see this again in your lifetime,” he said.
His voice was ominous, echoing off the siding.
I fought to find the features of his face in the dark, grasping
the unattainable, like catching a shooting star in a jar for keepsake.
© 2020 Andrea Festa
