Annie Marhefka, in Interstellar Fingerprints, weaves reality and metaphor into a heart-wrenching, though gentle, tide.

“[W]e were three sailboats whipping over the water, each navigating a separate course, vying for the wind to inflate our sails, trying not to crash into each other’s hulls.”

Interstellar Fingerprints | Variant Literature | Annie Marhefka

Metaphor as a device in this piece allows the reader some distance from the emotional turmoil the speaker and her father are experiencing, while still demonstrating just how painful that turmoil is. The only scene in this piece not experienced through the lens of metaphor is in the past. In the father’s youth. Otherwise, everything is connected to sailing, space, or dreams.

The escapism inherent in something like sailing mirrors the dreaming of the narrator:

“I would sneak out of the house and lie in the sand and dream of the intersection of sea and sky.”

The stars have also commonly been associated with dreaming and escapism, and this piece blends those two aspects in a fascinating way:

“[H]e’s still here, burning bright as Sirius, hands like points in a constellation: Big Dipper, Little Dipper, Orion – guiding our boat on his own.”

The sea, dreaming, stars, the sky, all of these represent not only freedom from the burden of their grief, but also structure for how to cope with it. The father does not stop being the Captain, even after the loss of “his first mate and his firstborn child[.]”

I appreciate how the speaker dances away from the cliches of unimaginable grief, and instead brings the reader into the almost out-of-body drifting of experiencing that grief. Often, stories about and descriptions of grief limit themselves to the upheaval and hurricane of the immediate aftermath. Instead, Interstellar Fingerprints casts its net at life after loss, and lingering.

“[W]e are just orbiting aimlessly, anchored to nothing.”

However, like the Voyager I, they still have purpose. Escaping into the ocean, guided by the stars, anchored by a spaceship with no anchor.

“Interstellar Fingerprints” appears in Variant Literature Issue Twelve, Fall 2022.