Overhead, without any fuss, the stars are coming on.

Casi had these on her ceiling, too, when she was a teenager, but she didn’t have this many, or this solid an understanding of the sky. The former occupant of this room pasted stars trickling down closet molding and peeking out from behind the mirror; Orion winks at her from above the TV.

Does a room remember the childhoods it’s seen? Is childhood–like a room, like a constellation–anything but a construct formed of negative space? If these walls could talk, they’d recite Greek poetry. Casi’s would have mumbled Dashboard lyrics.