Where the Sky Turns Gold

When I was seventeen, I used to come to the old observatory at the edge of town.

It wasn’t much — a single silver dome, rusting at the corners, surrounded by wildflowers and whispers of what used to be. It hadn’t been open to the public in years, but the gate was always unlocked.

I went there on quiet evenings, when the world felt too heavy and my thoughts too loud. From the top of the hill, the city looked small, almost kind — a collection of lights and distant laughter.

That’s where I first met Jonah.

He was sitting on the steps, sketchbook balanced on his knees, headphones in, pencil moving fast like the world might disappear if he stopped.

I almost turned back, not wanting to interrupt, but he looked up and smiled — that slow, unguarded kind of smile that makes you feel seen.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to bother you.”

“You’re not,” he said. “I was just drawing the sky.”

It wasn’t the answer I expected.

I sat down beside him, unsure why, and he showed me the page — streaks of blue and gold, not perfectly shaped but somehow alive.

“It doesn’t look like the sky,” I said.

He grinned. “That’s because you’re looking at it wrong. It’s not about what it is. It’s about what it feels like.”

That night, I watched him draw until the sun slipped below the horizon and the stars arrived, one by one, like they were late to a party we were the only ones still waiting for.

Over that summer, we met there almost every evening.

Some nights we talked — about everything and nothing. Other nights we just sat in silence, sharing music, watching the world turn from gold to indigo.

He told me he wanted to leave someday, to see the northern lights in person. “I heard they look like they’re dancing,” he said. “Can you imagine the sky moving for you?”

I told him I didn’t want to go anywhere. That the world already felt too big.

He laughed softly. “Maybe that’s why I need to see it — to make it smaller.”

We were opposites in every way. I planned, he drifted. I built walls, he drew windows.

But somehow, we met in the middle.

On our last night before he left for college, we climbed to the top of the observatory dome. The city below looked like a constellation we’d built ourselves.

Jonah pulled out a small envelope and handed it to me.

“Open it after I’m gone,” he said.

“Is this a goodbye?”

He shook his head. “Just a beginning.”

I didn’t open it that night. Or the next.

I kept it tucked in my journal for years, afraid that whatever was inside would end what we had — the way unopened letters keep a story alive a little longer.

Life went on.

I moved away for work, lost touch with people I thought I’d never forget. Sometimes I’d think about Jonah — in random moments: hearing a song he loved, seeing a sketch in a gallery window, catching the gold hour light on an empty street.

Every time, I wondered if he ever got to see the northern lights.

Then, last month, I got a postcard in the mail. No return address — just a drawing of an aurora, swirling green and violet. On the back, in his familiar handwriting, it said:

“The sky really does dance. I hope you’re still watching.”

That night, I finally opened the envelope.

Inside was a sketch — two figures sitting side by side on a hill, the world glowing around them.

At the bottom, he’d written:

“One day, when the sky turns gold again, come back.”

So today, I did.

The observatory is gone now, just a foundation of stone and memory. But when the sun began to set, the whole horizon burned in gold, and for a moment — just one breath-long moment — I swore I saw him there beside me.

Still drawing. Still smiling.

And I whispered into the wind, “I’m still watching, Jonah.”

Because some promises aren’t about distance.

They’re about time — and the pieces of us that stay,

where the sky turns gold.