On this clear and moonless night,
Mama and I wrap up in our winter clothes
and go outside to watch and listen.
The trees beyond our backyard form a torn-paper line
between the snow and this sky
filled with stars.
The snow glows lilac
as we step on its crust,
guided by faint starlight.
Mama and I don’t need to talk.
We are in awe of the magnificence above—
impossible to understand, impossible to hold.
There were no skies like this in Berkeley,
where light from the cities chased the stars away.
Here I can’t look long, deep, or wide enough
at the Vermont sky
on a new moon night.
I hold out my arms and twirl,
etching the sky above me in rings of starlight.
“Don’t fall, Mimi-chan,” Mama says, then
holds out her arms
and twirls.