Dead Stars Summary

"Dead Stars" is set outdoors on a suburban street at the start of winter. The trees are bending but the world overall is eerily silent. The speaker and an unnamed companion roll their trash and recycling bins out to the curb and admire the constellation Orion above. They share this romantic moment until the companion points out that they don't know any of the other constellations. This gets the speaker thinking about how we are all made of stardust, and we forget that too. She wants to reclaim this fact and lean into her own light and largeness. She points out how much we have survived and encourages us (herself, her companion, and implicitly her readers) to keep living, loving, and standing up for what we believe in. She wants us to stand up for the earth and use our bodies to defend other people, to let go of fear and be ambitious with our desires. She wants us to become so great that future generations will look to us just as the speaker and her companion are looking at the night sky.