Lonely Starry Night

They were so distant, so faint. Just frail little specs of light, whispers in a sea of dark, but it is not just black, not empty, not cold or lifeless. Shades and swirls, colors even in the pitch of night. They turn and move as he moved with them, as though that pale, almost silent, whisper, that slow churning was a part of him. It echoed, he could feel it, it was not strong, not more than a tingling, a faint shadow of a memory but it was there. Even when he closed his eyes he could feel it pulling at him. He looked up and he was small, but as he breathed, as he closed his eyes again and felt the rise, the fall, the echo, the silence, it was all connected, all linked together. Again he looked up, and again he was small, but as he breathed the night breathed with him, the stars flicker, and the stillness in the air shuddered around him.

There were more of them now, some strong and bright, bold against the growing pollution of the campus, but others, in the murk, in the cloudy depths so faint and timid that he'd had to stare off into the nothing for a brief eternity before he could see them, but they were there, and they are beautiful. So small and so large, so much larger than he could ever begin to imagine, our own sun a dwarf in their shadows. He shuddered to think how he must seem to something out there. Did he even register, or was he just a dream, and idle musing or something less, forgotten or discarded. Fancy. Fabrication.

Did the waves remember each stone they turned to sand, are the mountains carried on by the wind that makes them low, or are they lost to the many, faceless in a faceless sea? Could he remember all the lives that he had touched, had been touched by? Would they remember him? When Ky closed his eyes could he see their faces, faded like the stars? Must he stare into the nothing before they flicker, before they form and fill the void, the darkness, like whispers carried though the stillness of the night, or where they lost to him like so much else?

He could feel the cold now, the slow creeping of it up his legs, along his arms. He rubbed his hands across his skin, callused fingers hard and rough, familiar as they tried to chase away the cold. But it was not just the cold, not just the falling of the night nor the faint breeze the pulled loosely at his hair. He felt cold, and it was an empty sort of cold, a hollowness accentuated by the silence that he wrapped willingly around his form. It was his own creation, this cold, and maybe that is why it was so familiar to his touch.

He lets his hand trace though a pile of stones beneath the park bench on which he sat. He felt the cold within, but it was not the same as the cold in himself. Scooping some of them up he let them slide between his fingers in pairs, and felt their weight linger after they had gone, a memory in his hand, and then gone. It slipped though the frigid air, fallen through the spaces in the bench, to the faceless sea as he watched it disappear. He gazed, trying to find his stones again but in the growing twilight he couldn’t be sure, they had melded with their partners, splattering this way and that. He was alone again.

There was more truth, more art and genius in the idle musings of the man, in the simple stare and the play in snow. But it was beyond even him and his humble ways to convey it, to capture, confine it to a simple act or story for others to see, to feel as he saw and felt. In this brief Zen moment he was but a keeper of cheap tricks now found himself in the presence of true magic. Helpless and hopeless and lost. Alone. Empty.
The stars were gone, stolen back into the night. He looked up and he was small again. He breathed, and knew that that did not matter. He was here, content to look up and see the stars to wonder as they flicker, as they fade.

Slowly, the sun would rise soon, and steal them away for good. Rip away his musings and this time would be forever lost, a simply memory….just like Her. Why was she gone? It was his fault! He was too small to protect Her, his eyes only able to capture so much. It was he whom had killed Her. He leaned his head back, brought his eyes to a close, and began to doze off right there in that lonely, cold bench.