May 7th: "Stardancer" and "The Dark Between the Stars" by Carmen McElroy

“‘Stardancer’ and ‘The Dark Between the Stars’ delve into personal mythology and transformation, using celestial imagery to explore the gravitational pull of profound, transformative relationships and the intense, singular grief of loss.“
-Carmen

Stardancer

By Carmen McElroy

Sitting in clover, warm winds wash over me, you circle close, arms wide like wings in flight.
The sun spills honey through reaching
branches,
your laughter glints gold in the gilded light.

When I asked what you were living for,
my name slipped through your lips like nothing at all.
How am I everything and still nothing?
Stardancer, your plans are grand, but I am
nothing at all.

You once said courage blooms slow in the
spine,
but mine was a seed that never broke
ground.
I’m clinging to the chasm edge of my fear, Evermore cursed, the coward is crowned.

I gave my soul to the dark that keeps me
bound,
Its hands drag me backward each time I rise.
Still I claw through the dirt for her light in
the sky,
I’d crawl out of the grave to reach her eyes.

I remember her warmth in the softest dawn, the first soul I ever dared to name home.
She gave me wings I did not know were
mine,
and I flew from the cages they had made my own.

my curse to fall fast, headlong into flame, my flaw, the burn, the beauty, the ache.

She runs infinite through my chest,
her memory haunts every breath I take.

She knows my silence before I speak,
she knows the pulse beneath my scars.
Celestial body, orbiting my ruin,
my axis, my compass, my northern star.

Now the silence hums like an open wound,
and I hold the echo where her light has been. Purple, blue, orange, pink, all these colors of feeling,
stars colliding, an aching beneath my skin.

What did I do? What did I do?
Fractured fragments of starlight
It’s her, it’s her….my endless undoing,
her light still burns while my shadows
remain

Night gathers around the hollow I became,
her voice a ghost that still whispers my
name.
The cost of truth was losing her hand, now I live in an ache only I understand

The Dark Between the Stars

By Carmen McElroy

I begged you to fix me up,
drain off my anger,
stitch up these cuts on my heart.
Was I asking for too much?

Polyphemus may stagger,
Sisyphus may stumble,
I am no great sailor

Your love sustains,
your love carries,
I cling to it like the last vine on a crumbling
cliff
Our roots will hold this together

I pour myself out to you,
an ocean unending,
the shores grow farther, and the current
carries us on

You are my lighthouse, my atoll, my
salvation, my curse
My love, I’m a sinner, a liar, a thiever
Even gods quake, and they quiver

I dream of when our love wasn’t a battle,
when the words we spoke didn’t come laced
with daggers
Where are the promises we wove?
I can’t find them amongst the rubble;

Maybe I’m the storm, not the sailor
Maybe I’m the cliff, not the vine
I crumble, I crumble
Even in this wreckage, I know you are
divine

Polyphemus falls,
Sisyphus tumbles
And I…oh, I…shatter like I’m fragile,
shards of me scattered in places you no
longer run to

I reach for you again and again
My fingers stretch through this great abyss,
aching to touch the faintest warmth of you

Was it folly to believe love could mend
when I have been broken and beaten,
forgotten and silenced?
Was it hubris to think the vine could hold
when the cliff crumbled as the depths called
it home?

Tell me, do you feel it too?
The weight of us?
Or have you already let go, leaving me to
grasp at the phantom in the dark?

I search the horizon for a flicker, a glimmer,
any light of you
It’s a beacon that fades more each day

I refuse to close my eyes
I refuse to stop looking,
even as the salt burns my vision,
and the waves beat my chest

Perhaps love burns and reforges,
perhaps it heals and mends
But I am not Sisyphus, endlessly climbing
Nor Polyphemus, blinded by rage

Even gods falter.
Even stars die.
But you…you remain my constant

And if I am to be the storm,
then meet me there in the eye of it,
where silence reigns,
and the world holds its breath
Meet me there, and maybe, just maybe,
we’ll remember how to be whole again

Meet me there, in the dark between stars

Carmen McElroy

Carmen is a queer Native poet, songwriter and scientist.
Her fundamental idea about her poetry is that it is a tool of fierce resistance. Poetry is the language she uses to hold space for what has been erased: erased histories, erased voices, and relationships that time cannot unmake. For her, a poem is less a finished sculpture and more a vessel for containing an overwhelming force, whether that force is political anger, cultural memory, or suffocating grief. She focuses on creating a rhythmic, visceral experience for the reader, ensuring the sound and musicality of the words carry the weight of the subject matter.