A surprise came to us one night as we lay, nestled against each other, in the bitter cold of the dead planet, searching for shooting stars.
“Look! Over there!” Jenny excitedly pointed out. I thought I saw a flash of orange, but by the time my eyes were able to focus where she indicated, the meteor had already disappeared. Not barely enough time to make a wish. But at least I knew what I would have wished for. There was only one thing I wanted in the entire world.
Recollection of a faint memory. Aren’t all memories faded and rotten in one form or another? As a child, gazing up at the night, locked out of my house, alone in a field. Tears streaking down my face. Leaves of the shrubs brushing against my arms and legs roughly. No place to go. I had looked up and seen a shining, moving thing with a tail. Something inside me remembered that I was supposed to make a wish. I did not. Because I would have wished for hope and there was no hope.
“I am afraid for you.” She whispered as if not to disturb the universe. “I fear that one day you would become entangled in that past of yours, where I can’t touch nor rescue you, and you will be lost to me forever. You look so far away sometimes, and I wish you could just look at me and know that everything is, and will be, all right.”
I felt a foreign warmth spreading from my chest, traveling up my neck and down my shoulders, then arms, and my hands that are freezing because I neglected to remember I had pockets. She could not take away my pain, but she was the only one to try. What do people call it these days? Savior complex? She had it in her and was determined to cure me of my worries and from myself. She didn’t succeed, but she was never to know that.
“Did you know that shooting stars aren’t really stars?” I changed the topic, uncomfortable with her too intimate words. She knew, and maybe she also knew that I needed to speak, I needed noise to distract me, so she let me continue. “They are grains of sand burning up in the oxygen-filled atmosphere. So here we are watching for dust.” I grabbed a handful of the soil from the ground where we lay. “Dust like this. There are enough of it here in my palms to satisfy the hopes and dreams of an entire civilization.”
Shooting Stars
“Look! Over there!” Jenny excitedly pointed out. I thought I saw a flash of orange, but by the time my eyes were able to focus where she indicated, the meteor had already disappeared. Not barely enough time to make a wish. But at least I knew what I would have wished for. There was only one thing I wanted in the entire world.
Recollection of a faint memory. Aren’t all memories faded and rotten in one form or another? As a child, gazing up at the night, locked out of my house, alone in a field. Tears streaking down my face. Leaves of the shrubs brushing against my arms and legs roughly. No place to go. I had looked up and seen a shining, moving thing with a tail. Something inside me remembered that I was supposed to make a wish. I did not. Because I would have wished for hope and there was no hope.
“I am afraid for you.” She whispered as if not to disturb the universe. “I fear that one day you would become entangled in that past of yours, where I can’t touch nor rescue you, and you will be lost to me forever. You look so far away sometimes, and I wish you could just look at me and know that everything is, and will be, all right.”
I felt a foreign warmth spreading from my chest, traveling up my neck and down my shoulders, then arms, and my hands that are freezing because I neglected to remember I had pockets. She could not take away my pain, but she was the only one to try. What do people call it these days? Savior complex? She had it in her and was determined to cure me of my worries and from myself. She didn’t succeed, but she was never to know that.
“Did you know that shooting stars aren’t really stars?” I changed the topic, uncomfortable with her too intimate words. She knew, and maybe she also knew that I needed to speak, I needed noise to distract me, so she let me continue. “They are grains of sand burning up in the oxygen-filled atmosphere. So here we are watching for dust.” I grabbed a handful of the soil from the ground where we lay. “Dust like this. There are enough of it here in my palms to satisfy the hopes and dreams of an entire civilization.”