refraction of mystery |
by Robert Paul Cesaretti


"I made this because I knew how you loved them, the stars. I wanted to love something too, like the way you love them, so good. like god. these are my stars," she said, taking a necklace out of her purse, something she had made when they took care of her, when she had to go away. a necklace, of broken glass. the lenses of his telescopes. she hands it to him, lovingly, and he puts it on, delicately, around his heart as it were. "perfect," he says to her, "perfect." with her loss of mind came a love perfected, as he could see. which was wonderful. and as for his knowledge of the stars, this became intimate now, to his mind, the magnitudes we cannot conceive, the secrets we may never touch. by the refraction of mystery, the hope in her eyes.


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Robert Paul Cesaretti has published in Plain Brown Wrapper, The Atherton Review, Gambling the Aisle, SNReview, Dark Matter Magazine.  He is the founding editor of Ginosko Literary JournalHe is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area.