A STABLE STAR

Handle

From the end of the hallway

the door handle is only a small flash of silver

on a wooden door

Catching the soft ceiling light.

People pass it all day

A quick turn,

A gentle push,

A soft click behind them.

Up close

The handle is not as smooth as it seemed

Tiny scratches scattered across it

Thin lines, some straight,

Some curling where keys or rings brushed it.

The handle curves downward,

A lever, not a knob,

Worn pale where fingers press

And darker bronze everywhere else.

Once, door handles were simple knobs,

Used in ancient Egypt and Rome,

Lifting simple latches,

Guiding hands through heavy wooden doors.

Over time, hands have pressed onto it,

Fingers tracing the handles again and again

Tiny scratches mapping each touch,

A quiet record of everyone.

She wraps her fingers around the worn metal,

Turns the lever, and the door swings open,

Steps pass through the quiet frame

And behind her, the handle waits again.

A Stable Star

It’s really dark,

far away from lights

from cities and houses,

across the sky

the truth, but not the whole truth

come in a variety of shapes,

containing many older stars,

You may have seen it as a faint band of light

stretching across the sky

but only if you live somewhere with dark skies

outside of a city,

Even without the source of its name

a stable star can slowly become unstable on its own.

Brings together not only their formation,

structure, and evolution

but also what I have come to observe within myself

Missing Days

In 1792, a quiet year,

Britain stood still without knowing why,

nothing burned, nothing fell,

time just passed in a blink of an eye

An old calendar was folded shut,

the Julian, outdated after centuries,

and a new one stepped in,

neater, cleaner, closer to the sun

September blinked

The second went to sleep,

the fourteen answered the morning,

As if the middle had never been

Eleven days slipped through the door,

no footsteps, no goodbyes,

yesterday simply refused

To become tomorrow

Some counted missing days

Some counted missing birthdays,

and a few swore the year

Had bitten them shorter

But the season sighed in relief

Holidays drifted back into place,

spring found spring again,

and the sky made sense

And elsewhere in Europe,

this had already happened,

time had moved on,

Britain was just catching up

She woke up to find her days had vanished,

eleven mornings stolen without a warning

Birthdays unmarked and chores left hanging

Even her garden seemed to pause

Summer Kim is a student writer attending a school in New Jersey with a love for quiet stories, late-night journaling, and the rhythm of well-crafted sentences. Her work explores memory, identity, and the small moments that shape us. When she's not writing, she enjoys reading contemporary poetry and walking through the woods.