twinkle twinkle

It may be 4 A.M. PST, PP, but this is not the story of my life.

Many sallow moons ago, a young star was born in Queens. They swathed her in a little yellow robe, this star, this shiny bundle wound up tight.

Her parents were so proud! but this she would not, could not see for many years.

She stayed for days before the doctors let her go. "Is there something wrong with her?" asked her mother.

"She was born premature," one doctor said. He saw her shine but for a sliver of a second, and paused to stare... "but you can take her home tomorrow night."

That night, baby star dreamt and squirmed, but did not cry. The graveyard nurse noticed this and thought, how strange? They always cry, she thought, as she idly touched the Magen David hanging from her neck, wondering why this one should be any different.

Little star left the hospital the day after, and gained weight quickly after that. She was, however, always a little star, but as she went to school she grew in other ways, and earned those gold sticky stars which made her parents proud.

But as the years went by, and childhood turned into adolescence, she began to realize how she was not like the other boys but not like the other girls.

Sometimes she would shine in class, for fun, shift her own spectrum visible from night-glo, pale and blue, to a slippery banana sun. She'd smile and make the other students laugh.

She did not wonder, at the time, why nobody else could seem to shine. Well, she would think, it's so easy to shine, and so she would whenever she felt the rays were calling her.

As puberty began to shift its gears, little star wondered why she stayed so little. And why would she get that look from men, from boys, when she would feel the need to shine? Not soon after that, little star learned to shine only from the outside-in and rarely from the inside-out, which kept her safe from stares and vibes she could not really understand.

There were good years in school, the ones spent learning from wise elders from the older worlds. The scribe from Israel, the scientist from ancient China, the math teacher from the shores of Greece.

There were also years where it seemed like every night was rain and every step was circumspect. Why am I loved and unloved, she wondered? She did not know if she was brilliant or dull, odd or even, relic or warrior...

Halfway through one rainy season, she decided only to shine for herself and for the sky, but this did not seem to help. They still knew, "they" still saw something. What did they see?

Ten years had passed since she begun to wonder, and as she finally became tall and strong, she found a distant star who also shined, but shone online where electrons have less to fear.

Little star was now a woman, and she came to see, in a sudden gush of insight, that most people simply could not shine. This puzzled her, and as she sat at home one night, she began to cry. She saw the way the battle lines had been drawn, invisibly. She saw the way blank faces masked hate, the way blank hate masked fear, the way the "haters" masked themselves in a shameful naked neutrality.

Why did they hate her for her abilities, for being different, for being not the same? She saw this then, the way these fears had their root in history and snaked their way through time, whole histories of 'cide and stars and mutant fears, she remembered that unspoken verse, the mental chant they threw her way, "you're not like us, you're not like us," which made sense to her only now. After she saw a larger path ahead, one dim and fey, she stood up even stronger then, and grasped the way she was to twinkle like ten thousand suns before she came this way.