Stardust

You are made of stardust. 

That’s what they told me, 

So I looked, 

Just to see that my skin is made of the cosmos, 

Freckles for stars, scars for galaxies, 

From there I saw the Milky Way in me,

Though the stretch marks that came with the acne 

They were big and they ate at me. 

To touch, to pick, 

Though I let them be, 

Because to me they’re nebulae,

Not ready to go from the galaxy that is me. 

As I got older, more scars and stars were added to me. 

My body grew and stretched to fit the universe that is me. 

You are made of stardust, they remind me just in case I don't see. 

The mirror reflects me as I search my body for more clues to see if they are lying to me.

I see the veins that run from my wrists to my feet, all over my body.

But I can’t think of any reason they’d be part of the space that is me. 

So I think of them as vines that run through me, an oddity in my universe but my eyes are brown, not the darkest blue that I’m used to seeing in the space above me!

They're brown, almost black when I look to see.

I label them as another environmental fact of me.

Because they are tree bark, they soften and harden as the winds change around me. 

They are made into homes by those who don’t know where to go. 

My eyes look up to see the hair that matches them in intensity, but the difference is the hair on my head is more me than the eyes on my face. 

My family had the eyes I had before me along with the hair I braid, 

The color that gets plaited in though, that is the part of my hair that is all me,

It’s in the way that I’ve had green like the leaves of a summer tree.

I’ve had purple as dark as a sunset before me.

I’ve had blue like a crystalized sea.

Because the colors show me in all of my entirety, 

I am made of stardust. It makes up the universe of me, the nature inside me. 

You are made of stardust too, remember that, won’t you?