Page 93 - North Star Magazine 2022

Starlings
A murmuration of starlings is blood in the water Everything is everything else
Stare outward
The solar system is an atom, The Universe a cell
You are an infinitesimal piece of something so vast it’s incomprehensible.
But look within you.
Go the other way and suddenly you are made of multitudes.
Both are true, some middle ground of matter. To be both Culmination and Spec all at once.
A wonder, A vitality
The violence you direct at yourself is so loud and so brutal, blotting out any recourse.
But please, reconsider,
For when your blood mixes with the water on the bathroom floor Drip by shining drip,
take solace,
-Al Merle
Its Starlings.