Today they speak of planets beyond ours but last night I held the stars in my palms, under cover of darkness in bathrooms with a dry sink, alone but for the company of crickets outside the window and the giggling of a little girl over my shoulder holding children’s glow in the dark sticks broken, dripping making spots over hands and tiles, twinkles in the darkness and alone you can make believe you’ve finally reached the stars as they splatter around the room and laugh at their disappearance with opened lights for the stars hide when the sun comes out and for all that people strained to make sense of blurry images of planets already discovered, I rediscovered what happiness felt like- and it was in the laugh of two girls in the dark who’d learned to claim the stars for their own.