A Short by Macy Voss
The cold hovering over the water winds through the fibers of my sweatshirt and up my spine. My body involuntarily shakes from the cool summer night, starting in the pit of my stomach and working its way eventually to my fingertips, a familiar feeling in January, but not in August. My back aches from the hard and ridged surface of the dock I lay on, but I ignore the pain. I need to see the flashes.
My eyes observe the black sky above me, blanketed in faint pieces of light. I savor in its stillness, calmed by its consistency, but my focus is sporadically taken by the flashes playing unexpectedly on top of it. I watch green sprint across the east, almost too fast for me to catch it. I see orange dart across the west, its bright tail exposing its presence to me. I enjoy blue more than the others as it passes right over top and basks in my ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ before it too hides behind the curtain of night. I force my body to relax as the adrenaline tempts my excitement. I nearly jump to my feet with each passing phenomenon, forced by some inexplicable sensation from the depth of my being.
I know the annual Perseids meteor shower leaves its lucky onlookers in awe, but my spirit begins growing strangely unsettled. My mortal eyes pace back and forth, incapable of seeing all I want to see, all I desperately need to see. Open your eyes, I scream at myself. You’re missing everything. Long minutes pass in which I, knowing hundreds of beautiful spectacles exist within the atmosphere at each given moment, can’t catch even one glimpse. I want to open my eyes wider, see the entirety of the stage above, but the show continues without me. I watch as much as I can, powerless to see the rest. My futile efforts only aid my frustration, and I must succumb to the impossibility of my own omniscience. So as midnight creeps upon the dock, I stare straight up at the stars in front of me and allow the rest to pass by undetected, as if they never existed.
