Fly: A Poem

It started last night when a fly flew at my face and I flinched.

I feared.
I forgot. 

I forgot that within that winged creature of the cosmos
lied my familiar.

I forgot myself in a single swat
and suddenly all the stars started buzzing
and I realized that they, too, were my familiars —
my flesh made of theirs.

Blinded by the layers of casino lights,
I couldn’t see the majority of them,
the majority of my own kin,
and I began to wonder if
that hidden part of myself
that forgot itself enough to swat
at its own spirit
had run off somewhere
with those hidden stars —
if that hidden part of myself
had gotten lost in the light. 

And I felt less than whole. 

I felt a fool, fearful of my own features,
a menace to my fellow creatures,
and I shut my eyes and clenched my fists.
I prayed to God to make me disappear, too,
so I might find where those missing parts of myself went.

And just when I was about ready to lose faith
the fly came circling about my skull
and a little voice began to speak from a place

between silence and noise:

“The stars in the sky. … Do you see them in the daylight?”
“I do not,” I said.
“Yet they all remain there in the sky, do they not?”

And suddenly I felt less fractured
and a little less fearful as my mind
turned off and I fell asleep beneath a sky full of stars,
thinking of all the light we cannot see but surely remains;
thinking of all the parts of myself, unknown to me,
that by God, surely still remain,
and shall remain forevermore. 

Hannah Arin is a junior at Pitzer College pursuing a double major in religious studies and philosophy.