after after Kate McCallister in Home Alone

Cinnamon stains for life, so tip it over, wet your hands, coat your fingers in the umber, and trace me from freckle to freckle so I become a sky of constellations on nights when the moon hides her face from the stars. There’s a fine line between poet and muse, and the dark laid out like a sequined cape on snow skates right down the middle. If the perks of long train rides are setting albums to the shifting countryside or tucking into a Victorian gothic novel, the perks of longer nights are more hours to dream of sun. More time to catch the starlight beading in a metallic tang on my skin and seal it in a jar before it vanishes into dawn’s dull grays and watered down tangerine. I’d live in winter’s oil fields forever if it meant holding onto these auroras, these death lamps, this lunar lantern in my palms for a thousand graves and thousand and one lifetimes.

Prompts used (tags are the poets’ IG handles):

@angelealowes - “fields of forever” @imandq + @ml.mecham + @laur_enough - “metallic tang on my skin” @elenaspoetry - “the perks of long train drives” @kaytpoems - “the nights are longer, and I’m missing you” @alexismromo - “art to last a thousand lifetimes” @maryoliversdrunkcousin - “‘This is Christmas. The season of perpetual hope.’ - Home Alone” @itsashenelthing - “cinnamon can stain for life” + “there is a fine line between . . . and . . .” + “poet or muse?” @loisofthehearth - “Write about capturing your own light before it vanishes. After ‘The Sun Inside the Jar’ by Sylvia Plath.”