"Paper Stars"- by Anna Zhou
- Teen Writing
- Nov 2
- 4 min read
In order to make an origami star you cut a strip of paper and tie a “knot” to start. After that you bend and crease the strip of paper, entwining and interweaving the slip. Finally, you tuck the end of the paper into a previous layer and pinch the sides to form your star. In origami it is important to be precise, a quick fold of the paper is irreversible with no way to unfold the indent and smooth out the mark. The paper will never be new again, never as whole as it was when it was uncut, never as pristine as it was when it came from those neat stacks in the paper package bought in office supply stores. I learned when I was very young how to make these stars, spending lazy afternoons on the cool wooden floors making enough little suns to fill a jar. The stars could be anything I wanted: an incomplete dream, a lost friendship, a far-out goal, any hope that we can’t reach or fulfill yet.
There was a spark of accomplishment that these stars held also, succeeding in making something tangible, holding the hopes of making something of myself someday. As I grew older the patterns became more complex and soon I forgot about the stars. The jar sat on my shelf collecting dust along with those childish dreams.
My mother never liked the stars. She was always looking for practicality in the things that we have in our home. If not useful, it's labeled materialistic, even selfish to have so much of the unnecessary. It’s almost as if she had a fear that if our house became full of these impractical things, we would have no space in our minds to focus or think. As if the very structure of our home would become impractical itself, and crumble and fall on us before we know it. For her these dispensable things were a weight that was suffocating and drowning. Every lost star that I’ve accidentally misplaced became another annoyance she didn’t need, another clutter she didn’t want to deal with.
“Ni wei shen me you zhen me duo mei yi yi de dong xi a! Ni fang jian kuai sai man le,” She yelled from the doorway of my room, “Ni zi ji dou mei di fang zhang le, mei di fang shui le.”
Why do you have all of this useless stuff! Your room is almost completely full, you don’t even have anywhere to stand or to sleep.
“Zhe xie dong xi bu shi mei yi si de,” these things aren’t meaningless, I shouted across the room “They are important to me, it doesn’t matter if you don’t like them.”
I watched as her eyes glanced at the clothes strewn across the couch, the unmade bed, and the dusty shelves. She walked over and inspected the thin layer that built up after months of neglect.
“Ni xu yao zhen li ni de fang jian,” You need to clean your room, she exclaimed while picking up my jar of stars, “zhe xie zhen me ke neng you yi si a?” How could these have any meaning?
That’s when I lunged.
“Give it back to me.” I snapped back while reaching out my hand. The jar was cold against my fingertips and the powdery feel of the dust clung to my skin. That cool feeling soon left my hands as the jar came tumbling down when I didn’t grab on tight enough and surely the floor became a sky of glass shards and stars.
I don’t remember much more from that day. Just that we yelled for minutes and that I cleaned for longer and cried for even longer than that. I laid down on that wooden floor and sobbed without reason. She didn’t understand the longing that the stars held, the want they hold of being seen or being known. She didn’t know that every crease was a bend of life and a mark of permanence in my story. But did I really understand either? I let them sit there and let time pass before I lunged and held them again for the briefest moment. I glanced to my side to see a few scattered stragglers hidden amongst the darkness under my bed.
There was a pricking feeling in my hand and I looked to see a sliver of glass I missed while I cleaned. The crimson of the blood made the glass look like a ruby.
I don’t remember the apology, who said what and who was wrong. Just moments of silence when we walked past each other in the upstairs hallway and gradual return to normalcy. A new jar of stars has been made and it sits atop my nightstand for me to see when I wake. One day this memory will be forgotten, hidden by dust and time, and I then shall help my mother find her own lost stars.
