The stars, the galaxies, the dark fibres of all the in-between.

I want to be with you when you’re not in the room, the stardust of my mind resting gently atop your skin. Glitter, even when you think you’ve got every last speck, there’s still one, somewhere, catching the light, a spark of purple, possibly green, out of the corner of your eye.

I want to be all the things, the vastest expression, the astronomers of old, Galileo roping in the furthest cosmos, a cartoon figure pulling the soft string that hangs from each, tugging this moon there and rearranging that star so, creating new constellations, new pathways of seeing what you thought you knew.

I visited the stars last night before bed, wiping clear the day by checking on long-lost friends. I taught myself the constellations in quarantine but the forest partially obstructed my view. In a new home, my view has been ever northward, and I missed the southerly points I knew, anchors of my prior self.

Last night the planets literally aligned for me to see that straight belt once more, and I almost cried in recognition. Orion, once a landing point, but now - in memory that a runway goes both ways - a jumping pad to new orbit.