I lit a joint by the river,
the old one,
the one that’s seen everything
and forgives most of it.
Godavari hummed beside me,
low and patient.
The stars above—
clear like secrets
no one bothered to bury.
I looked up
and thought of the first humans,
barefoot and unsure,
naming gods into the sky
because they hadn’t invented
loneliness yet.
Their stars were louder.
Brighter.
Uninterrupted.
No city glare.
No satellite scars.
Just raw fire scattered across a black veil.
I wondered what we’ve traded
for that silence.
Our children might see nothing at all—
just haze
and history books
saying “there were stars once.”
Or maybe
they’ll live on some distant rock,
with a new sky above them,
new myths to whisper into space.
Maybe they'll name constellations
after things we lost—
like truth.
Like forests.
Like unsupervised dreaming.
And what if we’re not alone?
What if somewhere out there,
another creature lights a ritual
and looks up,
wondering
if they’re the only ones
who feel like a question
that never ends?
I exhaled into the dark.
Watched my smoke dissolve into starlight.
Didn’t say a word.
Didn’t need to.
The river kept flowing.
The sky kept listening.

And for a moment,
I was just
a soft animal
under a vast forever
trying to feel small
the right way.