It starts when you are alone in your room, looking up at the window with pink curtains. You count the edges of the window. Right left top bottom. Vaguely you understand not to look at the corners where the edges touch. Beyond the window, minnows swarm the creek, each a slim number 1, tallying each other as they pass. Tick, tick, tick, tick in the dark beneath the eroded tree. The curtains are covered with constellations of glow-in-the-dark stars because you are not allowed to stick them on the ceiling. The curtains hide the corners of the window, but you know they are there, just as you know the minnows are there in the cool water. Everything is all right. The pattern of your counting makes a 4. When the light goes out, the stars illuminate two paths converging toward the heavens.
"It Starts" originally appeared in diode.
