Approximation and Displacement
Someone’s great-aunt dies. Someone buys a star in memory of her great-aunt: you know, the mail-order star-naming schemes that come with a coordinate map and little certificate sealed by the American Astronomical Society, Inc, which are a delight to space-minded and poetic children and the sentimental among us.
Someone buys a star and names it Kim after her great-aunt and she stands sometimes (but not every night) outside her Missouri house and tries to use the coordinate map to find Kim somewhere in the sky. She ignores the ordinary ways that human Kim is still there, in the towering pecan trees, the persistent tulips, the musty curtains (who could be bothered to wash curtains?) and seven lipsticks—all Love That Red. Kim is still there in a list of phone numbers with spidery handwriting listing “niece,” “sister,” “cousin,” “neighbor,” beside each name, and the barest of checkmarks on each line, as though Kim wanted to keep track: who called, and who did not. One name with no room beside it because every day there was a call. Every day a voice on the other end of the line.
Someone buys a star and names it Kim and does not confirm that the star is still alive, does not ask if the star has its own name. She peers up at the sky and wishes the lights of the town nearby were quieter—what a funny word to use for light—so she could see the stars better. The star named Kim is alive. The star named Kim is a sun around which turns a scattering of planets—some gas, some liquid, one something like Earth, although not Earth. It is enough to say that the planet was something like Earth.
When the name Kim arrives at the star, the star’s gravity changes. Is it really gravity that changes? That is close enough. The star named Kim’s gravity changes and so changes the planet that is like Earth. Beneath the surface, bulbs grow thick and in the spring break the dirt with their thirsty, soft mouths. They are persistent. A fungus, bright as Love That Red, unfurls across the rocky shores of the seas.
Someone’s great-aunt dies and, packing Kim’s home—where she lived for seventy-six years—someone discovers a name on a list of family: a name she has never seen before. Evie—and instead of “cousin” or “neighbor” (no “daughter” or “son” or “husband” to be found on the list), next to Evie is the word “heart.”
Someone’s great aunt dies and she buys a star and names it Kim, and when the star hears the name Kim, it turns and turns and burns and cries out to the universe in search of a star named Evie.
© 2022 Portia Elan
About the Author
Portia Elan is a speculative fiction writer based in northern California. When not writing, she can be found walking in the hills, visiting the hardware store, or making cake for her wife. Her poetry has appeared in Ninth Letter, PANK, and other journals.