Teen Sequins 2022: Taber Cannon, Age 17
Holes in the Popcorn Ceiling
You taught me how to stargaze,
I was thirteen and felt
like an alien in my body, my limbs were
too large to fit in the sleeves of your coat,
you guided my hand through the curve
of Scorpius’s tail under the watchful eyes of
Andromeda. You told me I was the stars,
my body the backdrop to the world.
Begging and pleading,
you brought me to Target, the fluorescent light
a harsh reminder of what we were meant to be. You paid
the 11.99 in cash, let me hold
the dirty penny you got in exchange for the night sky.
The stars looked so pretty on my ceiling,
you held me up, large hands protecting me
from the darkness.
You left to answer the phone,
I climbed up onto the ladder myself,
and fell
down
and down
and down
until I was no longer the stars
I was just the floor.
The stars on my ceiling matched
the stars you drew onto my cast,
I carried the sky with me,
milky bone sown with speckles of you.
Taber Cannon is a Manhattan based writer, whose work is upcoming in Eunoia Review and has
been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. When not writing, Taber
spends the majority of the time listening to Florence + the Machine
and longing for a pet grizzly bear.