White stars are scattered like coarse salt across an indigo night sky. From the lower left, a tree that has shed all its leaves reaches upward with branches like thin black cracks, covering about a third of the frame. Toward the lower right the sky loosens into pale lavender, and the stars grow denser there. Near the tip of a branch, one reddish star hangs on its own.
The moment you look up, the nape of your neck folds back and your chin lifts on its own. Your neck feels cool. As your eyes follow the stars clustered at the lower right, your focus cannot stay fixed on one point and spreads wide across the whole sky, and the breath that paused for a moment at the tip of your nose slips out long through that gap.
When you replay the work left unfinished during the day over and over in your head, your brow tightens. Like the stars showing through the branches, your thoughts seem packed so tightly that there is no gap to slip out. Seen up close, each one is no bigger than a fingernail.
Open a window or stand on the steps outside your front door, keep your head raised, and pick one light that catches your eye, like the red star. Watch that one for a few breaths, then pass your gaze to the star beside it and on to the next, and it is fine to stop counting partway. In a neighborhood with few stars, a dark corner of sky above a streetlight is plenty for three minutes.
The same motion works after you get off the bus on the way home from work and pass the last streetlight in the alley. It is the same when you open the balcony window after finishing the dishes. While you raise your head, simply watch whether your shoulders creep up toward your ears or stay settled at their own height. On some days the left shoulder and the right shoulder move differently.
Through the gaps in the bare branches, a few grains of starlight keep seeping in to the end.
