John Grey
For That Star Man
He looked in on me, sweaty face, red-veined eyes, and a bitter smell of beer. 1 was strumming my guitar in the dark, my fifteen year old addiction of choice. The light behind his head shone on the strings enough to see my hand. My nails glinted like stars, like winter stars, for his breath was raw and acrid as January, and my fingers worked overtime to clear my snow clouds. He didn't say a thing, just stood there, gathering information he would never use, from chords not country enough for his taste, a melody freed from jukebox crackle. 1 chanted wordlessly beneath my breath. All those years when angry, tearful, dire lyrics tumbled over each other to write themselves, I wrote no lyrics, 1 took the light playing in the wet branches of his hair as his vocabulary, and the way he wouldn't step aside and let everything be shine. |