Stars
Falling in love will never be the same.
Remember when he shone for you like the stars? You don’t.
Perhaps you remember the stars? Those dots in the sky.
They shine like magic drops atop the wings of fireflies. Illuminating everything but not asking for anything. Because so is their nature. They only ‘borrow’, they do not ‘take’ more than they can return.
Remember when you wanted to reach out for the stars? But you didn’t. Because you were afraid of following a few displaced pebbles down into a jagged life where people believe pain is never-ending.
You saw a single face characterized by a deep and sincere suffering every day; you knew they had hurled themselves off the same cliff and the jagged edges had gashed their hearts. They scared you. You backed down a few steps. But the stars still shone every evening and you wondered why they had rushed forth so soon. So you came out in the evening; just in time to see the stars dance a jig as they would jump to the sky and take over the world.
And you stayed out for a little while longer every evening. Watching the sky as it turned eyes from baby blue to cerulean to cobalt to black. Cautious of shutting your own, just before the morning came with wreaths of mist grappling the stars and making them look so portentously gloomy. Their light battled to seep out of the fine films. As they exhibited valor for all the wrong reasons.
But suddenly, one evening they enchanted you for too long and lured you into loving their sadistic ways as well. Not giving in to the films of fog before the wake of the morning Sun. And you wondered why they were so insistent, so obstinate when you loved them all the same every evening when the sun had set. But you mistook their jealousy as love; you mistook their self-love as love for you and your attention.
That morning you sat, before the Sun had completely appeared; your face lightened by the dim light. Halos of serenity surrounded your beloveds; the stars. You gazed at them in silence as if roused from a deep sleep and they too answered your silence.
You thought you would never share conversations with anyone that were better than the silence you shared with them.
Perhaps you had forgotten that they had always been silent. For everyone.
As the Sun finally rose that day; the sky became a void of light pink and apricot hues. The essence of night silence was still suspended in the air around you with no signs of ambiguity. You sat still. Unknown to the world. Holding every breath. As if each breath, no, your every link with the other entities of the world would strain your bond with the stars.
You did not go back so that you could come back next evening. You stayed out till the evening because nothing about the stars scared you anymore. And at sunset you met them again.
And then every day at sunset you met them again. And every day at sun rise you bid them goodbye. Unmoving, unnatural for the rest of the world. Losing yourself in a million halcyon dreams.
Remember when you dared to finally lunge out for the stars in the sky? For you could not bear to bid them goodbye another morning. Remember clawing at the skies with splintering fingers? Remember tearing the clouds from the bleeding sky? Tearing it at the seams? Remember trying so hard to save the stars from another setting?
Remember falling into an abyss of irrationality? Remember the bottomless chasm that you called love? Like every fall, it had a jagged and brutal end as well. And when the jagged edges gashed your heart, you looked up at the stars hoping to find them pouring down their light and draining themselves. To fill you, to heal you and to let you know that they had hurt all the same as you.
But they felt hollow.
Like someone had punctured the sky to create them in the first place.
You tried to save them from what they were made of while destroying yourself. While they bathed everyone in their light of cruel oblivion. You stared up with horror.
Instead, they were still shining like those magic drops atop the wings of fireflies.
Remember when he shone like the stars for you? Remember ‘him’ now?
