The Sky At Night

Why can we never see the stars at night in the city? I know the scientific reason. Lights from the intersections full of night-time road trippers, the “baby, I’ll be right over”s and “sorry I’ll be late home”ers polluting the skies. Windows with the curtains drawn right back let rays of artificial electricity into the night to stop us seeing natures light. But why does this have to be? I love the stars. I love the moon. I want them back.

And I want them so much that, on desperate nights where I drive myself crazy or I miss you most, I will drive out in my truck and park in a lay-by on a faraway country lane. I’ll lay horizontal in the back of the pickup with a pillow, blanket and lantern I store under the passenger seat. I’ll observe the stars and I’ll find things in them.

I’ll find you in them.

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if you and I were alone on another planet together. What would it be like if we were transported away to live separately from society? Would you love me then? Would you have a choice? It would be funny to find out. It would be funny to see if we could stand each other like that, too. Imagine. No matter where you go, you’d never find anyone else. It would only be us two. Every day, you would have to make the choice: Do I spend today with them? Or do I spend today alone? They would be your choices. With me or alone.

With me or alone.

Part of me believes you would choose to be alone. I’m the sort of person you grow tired of easily. And here, on earth, I often ask you if you are tired of me or fed up. You always say you aren’t and I know you’re telling me the truth but you have other things to distract you from my constant attempts to engage you in conversation. Our talks about life and other deep topics wouldn’t be as important to you because they would be the only ones you get to have. The novelty would wear off. I would become uninteresting.

And maybe you would turn to the stars by way of ignoring me, of shutting me out. I wouldn’t blame you. But we would still exist on our planet together and I would be content with that. For even having you in silence would be better than not having you. And you would still be all my own, no matter how much you resented me.

But it would hurt me to know you were unhappy, trapped with me in the heavens. And space can only intrigue you so far. Years and years you could spend, studying the stars and the planets and the moons. You could learn everything you needed to know. You could sit there for days, weeks at a time simply staring at their beauty. But days and weeks could never stretch into forever. I know you. You would go mad by yourself with no one to talk to and nothing to do. You are so unlike me in that respect. I could spend years just staring at you. I could sit there and watch your features morph as you change from a teenager to an adult. I could watch your facial expression change as you slowly resented me more and more, not for trapping you there but because you were trapped with me. And I could watch the wonder leave your eyes as the stars fail to captivate you and the planets no longer interest you as the years pass and pass and pass.

Or maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe you would fall for me as I’ve fallen for you. Maybe you would do so because you already like me very much as it is and spending that much time alone with me could nudge your affections up one degree. Maybe you would fall in love with the new surroundings we found ourselves in. Maybe our planet would be very different from the earth. Maybe time would move differently. Maybe the colours would be inverted. Maybe there would be no colour at all. Or maybe there would be so much colour that our eyes would have to evolve and adapt just so we could take it all in, just so we wouldn’t be utterly blinded. Maybe the landscape would be exactly how you love land to be. Maybe it would remind you of the places you used to live and that I know you miss terribly. Maybe you would love our planet and not me, but you would get that love confused and believe it was somehow me you’d fallen for.

Or maybe you would realise that I was all you had left in the universe and you would settle. You would care for me deeply… but only as a companion. We would be the strongest friendship, the closest comradeship, but we would only pretend to be lovers because we would both know that I had always, and would always, love you more than you loved me.

I fall back down to my pickup truck with a jolt that wakes me. I’d fallen asleep, but something had woken me. A passing car? If it was, I couldn’t hear it now. I move myself and my things into the backseat for safety.

The stars are still visible. There are thousands. Thousands. And they are so beautiful. I wish you could see them like this in the city. I lock the doors of the pickup truck and open the tinted sunroof for better viewing. Sliding down into the footwell, my legs sprawled onto the middle seat in the back and my head balanced on the armrest between the two front seats, I observe the skies. Is that milky way dust? I don’t know enough to know. It could be. God, when you really look at this, you see how many colours there are here. There are purples mostly. Purples of all kinds. I usually hate the colour purple. I can’t stand it. But here, it's beautiful. It washes out and hides in black with a dignity no one on earth could ever achieve; not a coward, but a mysterious something that could be described in a hundred books and poems and arts and, somehow, never truly understood. I would take tips from these purples when I need to escape life unnoticed. They simply fade. They fade away. They journey as though at a party. Through a crowd of sweaty blue which passes a lonely yellow as it tries to chat up green by the red who is pouring out cups for beer-pong. Purple can wash through all of these, tying them together to leave them in the early hours of the morning, to leave them unannounced and never get in touch to say they had made it home safe. I love that. I wish I had the same swift ability. I might actually go to all the places I was too scared to go to, then, if I knew how to get out of them.

I often think of you when I watch the stars. They burn for years and years. They burn on fuel that is themselves and they burn with fierce passion. They burn so intensely that they burn out. I burn for you in a similar way. I ache to be with you, I feel fire for it. I feel it in the very core of my being and it burns me out. Sometimes I miss you so bad I exhaust myself just by thinking of you too much. And the heat that floods my face is comical. I wonder if you notice. If you do, I wonder how you manage not to comment and tease me. If you don’t, I simply wonder how. Maybe you don’t pay enough attention.

But you were always so observant. I don’t think a flame like that is something you could miss.

Just like I do the stars, I spend too much time missing you. I spend far too much time thinking for you, longing for you. There’s something about the stars which makes you yearn to be near them. You know the science, you know what they really are; they’re bad for you. They will burn you to a crisp should you draw too close. They’ll cremate you alive. They’ll be the end of you. But, despite knowing this, I yearn for them anyway. I yearn to be amongst them. Life seems so simple up there in the empty sky of every Nobel colour. So terrifyingly simple. Life with you seems like it would be just as simple. Loving you feels like it could be simple. I know it wouldn’t be, though. I know that it would burn me so badly I would never recover. I know the simplicity of it would ruin me - during and after its over. I would never be the same again. I would be morphed into a waste which cannot be saved or recycled. It could only be pitied.

I pity myself. I pity the fact that I can’t escape and throw myself into the stars or even become a star myself. They have such easy lives. They just come into existence and burn themselves out. They don’t have to make decisions to set goals and achieve expectations. They don’t have to find love and get a job, have beautiful babies and master life. They simply have to live then die. How bliss. How easy. How jealous I am. how I wish I had those privileges. How I wish I had that existence. I wouldn’t have to think. I wouldn’t have to feel. I wouldn’t have to know or learn. I wouldn’t have to love you. I'd only have to exist, blissfully quiet and peaceful. Easy.

But we don’t get these privileges. We don’t get the option to choose how we exist or what we exist as. We just have to make do. I’m trying to do that. I’m trying so hard to just make do. I'm finding it so incredibly hard and not having you by my side is only making it harder. But, as I said, we make do.

Instead, I spend too much time on my back, staring at the night sky and its party of stars. I can appreciate their beauty from my place on earth. I can appreciate them as distant things, things that cannot burn me if I do not get too close. Just as I appreciate you, love.