Star Stories #2

Tall trees, tall like giants, stand in clusters. Their trunks are naked from winter, and their branches bend in curves and curl like corkscrews. They are willows and oaks. A ballerina stands beneath the open sky. The world is just the girl and the trees. Her skin is pale and she looks to the stars that dot the sky like sprinkles on an ice-cream cone. The stars glow brightly. Her skin glows as the stars, and when she dances her dress of iridescent blue and grey seashells shakes. The shells are cracked and just little chunks of clamshells, and they click like heavy rain beating against a glass window in a summer storm. The ballerina dances a smooth dance with many twirls and reaches to the stars. She shakes her seashell tutu, and, like hard rain, the stars drop slowly out of the sky into her hands and speed up like popcorn popping in the microwave. The stars then blend into her hands. The lights of her skin and of the stars blend together like a thumb smeared finger painting. She becomes one with the stars, dancing into the sky. Her sea-shell skirt still can be seen twinkling in the sky since she has taught the other stars her dance.