That night,
weary of the crowd,
weary of the human machines that clatter,
I tore myself away from the noise as one sheds a diseased skin.
I left the city,
and found myself alone beneath the warm breath of the summer sky.
I lifted my eyes,
and in that upward gaze,
something from childhood returned —
a sacred astonishment, a soft humility before the infinite.
It felt like falling up.
The sky was wearing a cloak of bronze.
The stars were twirling like tigers of light
that tore through the tar of the night.
Their fangs of fire were gnawing at the dark,
and searing holes in the velvet expanse,
like nails hammered deep in the welkin's bark.
I breathed in the beauty of this funereal veil,
That takes its source from the void that won’t echo,
And that reminded me that I’m only a mote in the abyss.
I stood there—
alone.
Like a moon-fisher
Lost in a sea of wilted flowers,
casting lines into the void.
I baited my hook with pieces of my own heart,
Hoping that something would bite
and pull back from the ether.
And I waited.
I waited for the silence to shatter,
for the night to answer,
so that my dreams stopped bleeding
into my waking hours.
I waited.
But the stars just kept on burning out in silence,
while my dreams kept dripping like open wounds.
I was fishing for meaning
in this night,
I was waiting for its answer
but all I reeled in were fragments,
slivers of light
that faded before I even got to touch them.
The dark stared at me,
daring me to blink first.
And I wondered,
I wondered how many nights like this the stars had seen,
how many souls like mine they had watched with that pale, quiet gaze,
while we knelt beneath their cold indifference
and called it beauty.
And still, they kept twirling.
Still, they blazed,
while I waited,
while I bled,
while I held my breath and hoped
that maybe,
maybe—
the next flicker would light the way,
maybe it would spill some hint,
some clue that there was meaning hidden in their glow,
a reason buried in their fire.
I would beg the stars to break the silence,
to stop their silent spin
and to just say something,
anything.
But I know they wouldn’t,
and that I could only choke on the ash of their silent dirge
that smothers those who dared to look up
only to find out that there is no answer.
And then—
it hit me.
What if it was never about the stars?
What if they are silent because they’ve already said all they had to say
and this eternal silence of the infinite spaces
only existed so we might pour ourselves into it?
I understood why we built gods,
erected cathedrals,
raised cities of glass and steel,
split atoms,
and walked on the moon,
why we loved,
sang,
screamed,
wrote poetry.
And maybe that’s also why I drink so much.
So, so much
just so I could catch flames
like these stars,
to be like them,
to rend the void that doesn't echo back,
just so I could look at myself the way I look at them
and believe that I could make any sense of it.
Science is too short to measure the infinite.
Art is too vain.
But this flame—
my flame—
is all I have.
And I want to burn.
I want to cast off this skin that traps me,
I want to lighten my bones from the weight of the world
bare my teeth at the cosmos,
howl at the heavens,
tear through the ether like fangs of fire,
and scrape the cold black bark with my nails.
Maybe I was born to blaze,
or at least I just need to believe I could,
that I am the beacon,
the dawn that splits the abyss,
the answer made flesh.
That night,
I felt something kindle,
as if I, too, could be a tiger of light.
That I could dare look into the dark
and perhaps even make it blink first.
