Water droplets evaporated off of the shower tiles and she missed the star-patterns they cast on the tired bathroom wall. Last week she sketched their approximate constellation on the back of her Hispanic Poetry essay, and her professor returned it with her galaxies circled in red. "What were you thinking?"
In all honestly, she would have to say she doesn't know.
---
She sticks post-it notes to the walls with little phrases, interesting questions, sad stories told in six words or less. People shrug their shoulders and roll their eyes when they see them, but her wall is now covered in pinkyellowgreenblue thought and God, she still has the ceiling left to fill.
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Last semester she spilled an entire container of rainbow paper clips behind her desk and can't bear to pick them up, not because of any pre-existing laziness she projects on herself, but because she knows where they are now. Their order is sure and careful, scattered across her floor, mixing with discarded staples and bent safety pins. They are her prism exploded.
No one saw it but her.
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These days every three leafed clover feels like one in a million. The texture of her stone dorm is worth pressing her hand against for a moment, capturing the imprint safe in her fist for as long as it will keep. Extinguished birthday candles, still smoking gently, can bring her to tears.
---
(Once she broke a glass coffeepot on the linoleum. She swept up as many shards as she could, but still a fine layer of fragile dust covered the floor. For weeks afterwards she would walk barefoot and collect hundreds of little tiny cuts, but couldn't bring herself to sweep up the pieces completely. She'd sit in her bed at 2:03 AM and contemplate the glittering fragments coating her torn skin. Like a fairy tale that didn't come true. Like walking in glass slippers and having them crack beneath your feet. Like stars.) | 
