If Stars Could Speak

His hand reached for mine, and our fingers twined themselves together.

Above us, the stars twinkled. We counted the galaxies, and he found thirteen new constellations. I laughed and said that there were no new constellations- they’d all been counted, catalogued, and named already.

He told me there were hundreds of new constellations. It required imagination, he said.

I poked him in the ribs. He grinned.

He showed me one he called The Leaning Tower of Eiffel. I couldn’t see it. Tuesday Night Pizza looked more like a drunk toddler’s circle than any kind of pizza I’d eaten, but he wouldn’t listen to my arguments. Below the Big Dipper was a sort of wobbly stack of stars. He named it Twin Giraffes.

I rolled over on the blanket and started counting blades of grass. Isn’t it amazing that the world has such infinite beauty, I asked him. Stars and water droplets and grass and people.

He said that people weren’t so beautiful. When I gave him a look, he changed his mind. I know a girl, he whispered, who is more beautiful than the universe.

I answered him: the universe isn’t the kind of thing you call beautiful. A universe is endless. It is powerful. It is creation uncontained and unrivaled.

He kissed my hands, my eyelids, my lips.

Powerful, he whispered. Infinite.

Beautiful, I echoed.

~

There was a full moon that night. We hadn’t planned it; it just happened that way.

Everyone was gone, and the two of us sat alone in the silver glow. He looked different now. Softer, somehow.

I left my gown behind, toes digging deep into the sand as I ran. He was close behind, and when he caught me, we tumbled to the ground. The moonlight filled his eyes with diamonds.

Here is a new constellation, he said. He traced his finger across freckles on my nose and cheeks. Our Horizon, he called it, his touch gentler than the lazy breeze. I wanted to name it Cupid’s Arrow, but he said that was silly. Too literal.

I twisted my fingers into his, and our silver bands shone bright in the moon’s glow.

Do you think the moon can see us, he asked.

I didn’t know. But if it could, I added, I would want to hear her stories about the world.

Would the moon remember her own stories, he asked, or would the stars remember for her? If a star fell out of the sky, would some stories be lost forever?

I didn’t know that either. Maybe if we catch a falling star, we’ll learn, I told him.

Or maybe, he said, we should give the moon a new story, he said. To replace her lost ones.

Nestled in the sand, we told stories to the sea, and the moon, and all the stars until our lips were numb. He swore he could see a smile on the moon’s face. The sun finally started to rise, and we began the walk back.

I flicked water at him and skipped ahead. I wondered aloud if the sun had any stories.

He just smiled. Perhaps we should stop and tell it some, just in case, he said.

~

A breeze blew through my thin sweater. I might have felt the cold, if I was capable of feeling anything at all. The sky was different. Empty.

It didn’t matter to me. I had my own constellations.

From the south window of the house, The Leaning Tower of Eiffel would have been visible. Twin Giraffes usually lived near our bedroom. I looked straight up. There was no moon, and no Tuesday Night Pizza.

The names of the galaxies I once knew fell away. I would rename them, just this once.

That one would be called Westerly Wind. And across the sky, I could see Maelstrom Extraordinaire. There, Melting Clock. Just above the mountain peak was A Sleeping Sloth.

He would have said that I was too boring. It required imagination to name the stars, he’d once said. I wanted to laugh, but the sound wouldn’t come.

How dare you, I whispered. I hoped the moon could hear, wherever she was.

We were supposed to have an infinity, I said. We were meant to be limitless and untethered from the universe.

If the moon wants a story, I said, tell her to listen.

I brushed the tears from my cheeks, smearing them across Our Horizon.

~

His hand reached for mine, and our fingers twined themselves together.