I stand, all alone, in the desert. It’s night, but the sky isn’t dark—it just hangs there—a deep blue background for the millions of stars I was never acquainted with while I lived among the light pollution a thousand miles from here. They tickle my eyes as they fade in and out of vision, covering everything in a cool, silvery glow. I stand beneath them, letting their light wash over me too. They have this way, I think to myself, of making everything seem beautiful—the kind of light that catches you in all of the right places.
There is nothing to interrupt my thoughts here—nothing to deflect and offset my own harsh criticisms. I hope for an interference of some kind, but there is just silence and the churning of self-reflection that hums hot through the sides of my head.
I think about how you would revel in this kind of quiet—this sort of loneliness. I imagine you swallowed whole by it—the space, the silence, the darkness; how it would make you smile. And I smile thinking of your smile. I smile so hard at the thought of your happiness that my mouth suddenly cracks into a scream. What comes out of me is so loud, so long, so full of everything that I had tucked into the secret niches of me, that it shoots out into the night and smatters the whole of the sky.
The gorgeous dark blue fragments come down first; slowly falling from above like fine silks, decorating the curves and edges of this dusty desert. The millions of stars hang there for a moment, still glittering over nothingness. They hesitate, handsomely, and one by one, they start to descend. Then, by the fistful, they come crashing down. What follows is a sound— a thousand cymbals in a rainstorm—deafening but peaceful and powerfully calming. I let them cover me, exploding and splintering as they make contact, drenching me in a marvelous warm light. It drips from the ends of my hair and the tips of my fingers. I taste its tinny glow on my lips, and I can feel its brightness catch in my lungs and cloud my breath. The sensation brings me to my knees. I hush my thoughts into the happiest unprecedented tears and exhale.
It won’t be long now until they find me here.
It won’t be long before they realize that I’m the girl who misloved so deeply, she up and brought down the whole **** sky.
© Bitsy Sanders, September 2015