Contents

Star Shooting

He told her:
I’ve never lain beside someone and watched the stars.

She recounted:
I’ve been there for hours, with a woman and a bottle of wine. We stayed long enough to watch the stars rotate throughout the sky.

She and I, wet grass, country stars. It filled me as a little girl: dreams.

When we moved out of the pool from our evening swim, I still too drunk to remember how to not drown, she swimming us through the water, neither of us wanted it to end. We gathered materials: backpack, bottle of blackberry wine, water, beanbag and blanket. Trekked away.

We hiked across a field, following the grassy paths. Found our space beneath the moon. 

Here we spread our ground cover, stripped off our wet clothes and settled into a long night of watching Cassiopeia and The Dipper make their way around the world.

We discovered that we will always love our past lovers, because they are a part of us; without them we would not be what we are. In this way we gave ourselves permission to love what is past, because it makes what is future
and present. 

We touched each other with soft sweet fingers; we each felt as if we were touching a mirror image of ourselves. Innocent. With talking that cured emotions that had not been cemented, we were left awash in the moment
we shared.

By the time we began to think about going back, we had solved all of the mysteries in both of our lives. 
———————
He: 
You can almost fall in love with anyone, can’t you?

She:
Of course.

The right ordered words, speak some easy poetry, connect consciousness, when mouths open movies come out, grace’s dance, lover’s winds.
———————
She:
Lifelike stories mesh with reality:
Coming in from a late night out, into his kitchen. Both of us still in our Halloween costumes, he Tom Waits, me after prom, came to sit on the turquoise chair amongst the checked black and white floor. He asked me if I wanted a T-shirt, I said that I had something. I changed into my transparent nude leotard and returned with my dancing stocking feet. I perched on his lap as he chain-smoked. We shared a beer.

Ballerina dancing in the kitchen, standing on my tippy toes, a handsomely dressed man twirled me, dipped me, kissed me. We spun off to bed, shed clothes, batted eyelashes, fell into the softness of cotton sheets. 

My nakedness felt innocent next to his. We kissed for minutes, hours. 
We stirred, near in and out of conscious breaths, finding each other’s mouths and holding in for minutes.
———————
He to she: 
Instant intimacy, the worshiped one-night stand, the instant luster of new territory, wet dreams of colleagues. 

She:
This is my mind. Culture's implanted memories:

I want to fuck, orgasm, pleasure center, apex, cuming, this guy, that girl, giving, getting. Immoral, casual, contagious, fuck without a kiss, kiss without a care, pain, irrational beings. 
Rap poetry, sex like animals, self-centered, the inability to focus on consequences, the instant age of technology seeping into
social inadequacy. 

Where does the silence begin again? When will my mind think again?Existence outside of a cultural context of pornography.
———————
Internal dialogue of society’s sexually crazed membranes: it has ceased. 

On the roof, fifth story, arms around. Before, before everything, but after conversation. Mental positivity that was driven deep as dreams—then his kiss moved reality. 

Effervescent evening, another starry night, cold, brisk, enough light to change the world even after the sun had sunk into the trees. Space, uncharted and untold. Skylight’s gold lining.
———————
We arrived, a perfect patch of sunlight outlined a square on his bed. I curled into the sun spot. My body, wrapped in light, moving to soak him up, him in, pores and creases, movie scenes, intrinsic poetic memory, the light catching behind the bright blues of his. Illuminated skins, cream, ivory, white, cascades of blond pouring between our eyes, connections, not losing sight. Wild, vibrant, pure.
———————
She spoke of the days in the creek. Days that wouldn’t move from her memory, when the seaweed clothing they drew from the earth cascaded into the sky. The silence with the animals, aquatic and ground, declared their being. Her, she, they, we. We are all running into the sky, the day the night, the sun the bright, chasing an ever-changing stardust set into the trees. These were the nights and days we
shot the skies. 

Naked children, let us be. Capable on any level of being perceived. 
———————
Something for everyone, between layers, the sheets, wrapped up works in poetry, reality ripping at the seams. The three: something for the incapable, the one who cannot be stimulated, mind-obvious as it seems. The message, the ­context, the depth of the meaning. The silence read from the lines in-between. The subtle messages hidden in smiles. 
———————
Streams of consciousness spur from one thing leading to another: yet nothing is off topic. We are recounting and relating to life. Endless strings, connecting, spurring, spurting, dividing, divulging secrets and the things that aren’t, looping back to drive the same instances to dreams, lessons all the same: manifested in learning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jenna Citrus' personal mission statement for art and design is “innovation as creation.” She started her artistic journey as a photographer but now merges and mixes traditional and new media to create multimedia design works. Her favorite aspect of the artistic world is its proclivity to change. She believes that in order to continue to grow as an artist she must expand her horizons by publishing print media and finding new methods of digital and traditional publications. For more of her work, visit jennacitrus.com.