The Stars Hung Diamond Cold by Susan Waters

During the last Christmas, the girl, now woman, slept in her childhood bed. Outside,
wind sculpted drifts into a frozen white sea, the crests rising and toppling. Far underneath
were small animals, hibernating in a quiet world.
In her own sleep, someone she knew was decorating the bed with small, brilliant lights,
the brightest stars in our galaxy. She woke to see, but only the night, its deep darkness,
and the frozen landscape were there. In the next room was the deep breathing of her
aging parents.
After the mother’s death, after she stood before her mother’s still body–a child before a
statue that could never speak again–a river parted and she drowned within herself. Time
stopped and jolted forward, and the universe was wrong in its motions. If she had cut her
hand, she would not have felt it. Hunger could not reach her. Sleep could not quell or
even momentarily quiet. Obligation–the rising to work, the work itself—lost all
meaning. She went back to the childhood bed, closed her eyes, thinking dying must be
better, and then she saw, with closed eyes, the same lights from the last Christmas. They
were brilliant and nervous, like the Northern Lights, and almost encircled her head.
She opened her eyes to see, but nothing was there–just pain, which is like fear, the fear of
a child being left alone in a crib, knowing that the mother would never return.
Abandonment is a like a blizzard opening its mouth.
Outside, the sky pulsed and boiled. Between her and whatever is right next to us is a
curtain and we call it a sky but it is a portal. “Where are you,” the girl/woman demanded,
a tyrant, a petitioner, a starved beggar.
“Everywhere but no-where,” was the answer and it came to her in her mother’s voice.
A vision does not last long. It is a path through unknown woods never to be repeated. It
is a few thumps of the heart in a lifetime of a heart beating.
Mourners were at the door. Day was ending. Even a vision cannot comfort. In a
universe of people and life, the girl was alone. The stars hung diamond cold and warmth
left everything, even the Earth.

About the Poet:

Susan Waters started out as a journalist covering hard news in upstate New York and for 13 years was a magazine editor and writer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary. Her publishing credits are extensive. She has won 12 prizes in poetry and has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook Heat Lightning was published in 2017 by Orchard Street Press. Currently, she is Professor Emeritus at New Mexico Junior College.