She looks like a person, but she doesn’t talk like a person. Her voice is pebbles hitting the water and when she opens her mouth, poetry comes out. She says my heart is a beautiful contraption and I want to know what that means.
Linnea Boice is a queer storyteller and poet who does her best to fall in love with every place she calls home. Her current home is Bellingham, WA where she is studying Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her short-term goals are adopting a cat and getting a line from Sappho tattooed on her ribs. When not writing, she can be found playing Dungeons and Dragons, enjoying a pint of brown sugar ice cream, or soaking in the rare Pacific Northwest sunshine. Feel free to contact her to discuss poetry or future cat sitting opportunities.
It starts with a wish that doesn’t look like a wish.
It starts here, on the roof of a building that was once an elementary school, and currently isn’t doing much besides taking up space. And here I am, sixteen and taking up space, a can of spray paint in hand.
WHEN I AM THE LAST PERSON ON EARTH I WILL YELL DO THE STARS DARE BEHOLD ME?
When humanity inevitably leaves this planet behind, this husk of a town in particular, I will be what I am most often; transparent. And I will be left behind. Everyone else can move on to bigger and better and farther things, and I will be here with the ivy-laden buildings, watching their fuel trails disperse. Without all the white noise and white light-pollution maybe someone will see me from on high and choose to not look away. Maybe I will let them.
Next time, a star is waiting for me on the rooftop. She says her name is Aster and that there is something hidden in my spray-painted letters. She looks like a person, but she doesn’t talk like a person. Her voice is pebbles hitting the water and when she opens her mouth, poetry comes out. She says my heart is a beautiful contraption and I want to know what that means. I want her to be right.
I show her around, even though there is hardly anything to show. It is all so new and close that she doesn’t mind: even the limp October grass, even the exhaust from diesel trucks, even the broken stoplight, one of three in the whole town. Of the new-ness milkshakes are her favorite, despite the cold. She says it’s colder up there. I nod in agreement, my mouth full of fries.
She is as curious about me as everything else. She wants to know what music I like, do I play sports or an instrument, when I started doing graffiti, what do I think about when I’m alone on that roof. She asks and asks and eventually I answer with more than a mumble and a shrug. I listen to mostly alt Rock. I’m on the varsity volleyball team. A friend from middle school detention showed me how to use a can of spray paint. I think about being the last person on earth.
I make her laugh without trying; I like the sound so much I start trying. Pretty soon I’m sneaking out every night. I ask if we can meet during the day, but she reminds me that I wouldn’t be able to see her. That’s the trouble with stars.
The trouble with sixteen-year-old, small town dykes is they wish no one could see them in the light. It’s better to keep your head down, sit in the middle-back, and wait until the other girls leave the locker room. Even my parents don’t hear the door anymore; the screen rattles in the frame and the tumblers shift against one another like teeth grinding, but they don’t notice. At some point this is willful. At some point they decide they don’t want a gay daughter and that the easiest thing to do is pretend they don’t have a daughter at all. The family history has been rewritten. My brother is an only child and they all live in a haunted house.
The ghost is quiet. She does her own grocery shopping and always locks the door on her way out.
I don’t mean to tell Aster all this, but the words are heavy and tumble from my mouth. There’s not pity in her eyes, but I know that if she looks at me for too long, I am going to start crying. I know that if I start crying sea levels are going to rise and I am going to be alone out here a lot sooner than I thought.
Stop it, I say. Just stop.
She looks away and I hate her for it.
I don’t go to the roof the next night. The night after that is the state volleyball tournament. For a second, I think I see her face in the crowd. The next second, the ref whistles a point and the match is tied. I land wrong coming down from a spike. We win. I go to the E.R. with a broken ankle. My mom doesn’t answer the phone and Coach gives me a ride home; my new crutches laid across the back seat. I can’t go up to the rooftop. The doctor says it will be six weeks. Six weeks. I think about Aster’s laugh and start crying and count the inches as the sea creeps up.
My dad drives me to get my cast changed in silence, eyes on the road. On the way back I ask him to stop at the grocery store and he turns into the parking lot’s disabled space without comment. I know that my gratitude is unearned and that he is supposed to love me, or at least look at me, but I am almost out of milk and say ‘thank you’ anyway.
Six weeks is forty-two stumbling days, each one dragging its feet. Each night puts more distance between me and the moment I should have gone to Aster and told her I’m sorry for making her look away. I wonder if she is truly a star, and if that means she can still see me even when I can’t see her. I wonder if that was her in the crowd after all. I am scared that she won’t be waiting for me on that rooftop and I am scared that she will. I don’t have the words to fill a six-week silence.
Day forty-one lasts at least a few centuries and my shin itches incessantly. On day forty-two the cast comes off.. Darkness falls so early now, I limp to the elementary school an hour after getting home. Only to find it empty, the rooftop bare. All my words evaporate off my tongue and tears bite at my eyes once again. I haven’t cried since that first night, but there’s no reason to stop. Let the oceans rise.
Did Aster look back?
Even after my sadness dries up, the question sticks. I remain on the roof and turn it over in my mouth like a cough drop. It isn’t until I turn to leave that I see the graffiti, faded slightly but still there.
WHEN I AM THE LAST PERSON ON EARTH I WILL YELL DO THE STARS DARE BEHOLD ME?
I go home. I get a can of paint. I find what was hidden. WHEN I AM THE LAST PERSON ON EARTH I WILL YELL DO THE STARS DARE BEHOLD ME?
And I wait.
Just before dawn, I wake to fingers brushing my shoulder and a soft voice, stones splashing in water.