Tink Wildly by Threasa Meads

As an astronaut, I played with comets and stardust. I’ve had a jar of comets under the bed since I retired. Sometimes at night, when my husband’s asleep, I crawl under the bed and shake them up—they tink wildly against the glass. I unscrew the lid—just a little bit—to feel their heat against my cheek, and screw it back on tight, pressing my fingers to my quivering lips. When the jar’s safely tucked away, I slide into bed and stare up into the dark.

It took me ages to work out how to catch comets. The first time, I was sitting on the couch when a baby slipped from me. I held the tiny thing in my hand. It twisted and shrunk into a little ball and burst into flames. It ripped around the room, bounced off the walls, and scorched all it touched. It kept shrinking. When it got as small as a teardrop, it popped. I watched helplessly as a tiny sparkle of stardust dropped, lost, between the fibers of the carpet.

Threasa Meads’s first memoir, Nobody, was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 2008 and awarded a Text/Varuna Publisher Fellowship in 2009. Her work in various genres has been published in anthologies, online journals and the street press. Threasa is currently a PhD candidate working on a magical realist memoir, a sequel to Nobody titled Singing up the Bones, and was recently a Katharine Susannah Prichard Emerging Writer in Residence.

Other things you might want to read:

Bright Orange Cowboy Boots by Threasa Meads Audio: The Suit by Matthew Vasiliauskas Remnants by Valerie Arvidson The Amazing Sleepless Boy by Lynn Mundell