Forgotten Star

Poetry Contest: Summer Songs

Someone drew a 5-pointed star
in black ink
above the poem I am reading
in this old book,
a poem about suicide.

It makes me think of the crushed flowers
I found sometimes
between the pages of used books
in the bookstore where I worked
when I was 25
about the time this book was put into the world
and it makes me think of the woman
I was with then

and how I wandered away from her
one terrible night.

Touching people in a timeless tryst
across the years,
wondering what the star meant,
who the crushed flowers were from
or for, that short,
heart-stopping human
life, the skies

open to be read on jealous
august afternoons.

But it was me,
I put this star above this poem
30 years ago,
a star that by the time you see it