You can’t see the stars in Birmingham.
Instead, above is just a muddle
of clouds, lightness, and dark; reflections
and beams. A mask: those twinkles too shy
to watch down on us tonight.
A city of orange awakeness,
the suburbs still
too loud, too alive, too alert
to coax those stars from behind
their disguise. This sky
means so little in Birmingham.
Instead the land below shines as bright
as the proud stars do back home.
You can’t see the stars in Birmingham.
The bears, the belt, the twins. Who else
do these tired eyes
no longer meet?
But I’d be lost here
without that orange muddle of nothing.
I look above the skyline and it reminds me
of what moving here
made me leave behind.
Aimee S. Green holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham and still lives in the city. She spends more time changing nappies now than anything else, but finds comfort in recording and exploring the strange world outside through her poetry. She shares her poetry and prose at http://aimeegreenwriter.wordpress.com.
Aloka 
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