A Suit of Stars

I can sometimes be obsessive-compulsive when it comes to the way I organize a room, or the methods I undertake in order to properly clean and maintain a treasured space. I pay particular heed to the shadows of objects, where the light hits them and from what angles, and even more so to the shapes the shadows resemble. Even the shadow of a tiny leaf from my houseplant (her name is Desdemonia) has the potential to cast a creepy visual across my living room at the right time of night. I do my best not to tread where the shadows lay out of respect for their art. Shadows, too, have personality. It is quite the game of hopscotch when I have to pee in the middle of the night. 

But I’m more concerned about the sources of light. These hallway lights, these phone-camera flashes, (this laptop screen), these nightlights, these candle flames, these distant stars, these melodies in a stranger’s voice as they talk to their pet, those 4th attempts at correcting an imperfection on the canvas, you can see them flicker if you look closely enough without blinking. They are fleeting reverberations to be witnessed, if not idolized and marveled over. Once in a blue, you’ll even have the honor of hearing them sing. A song not intended for human ears, but found always present in human hearts. These lights are dim but they never fade. They’re the best of the best. You make friends of them. You make songs about them, you cook for them, you sing back to them to mimic their miracle, you admire their unique way of explaining things and you borrow each other’s light, you twirl in the shadows of their absence and you strike a pose in their overcast. All to bottle that very special twinkle. 

I collect all the stars I’ve stumbled across, those eenie weenie teenie tiny flickers of bedazzled grandeur felt between the grains of sand in an hourglass.  A story here, a sculpture there, a peculiar sound the wind makes as it howls between the houses that are too close together but not far enough apart, the perfectly made mistakes. They all have the same magic, anyways. The power which captivates your undivided attention. The divine coincidence, the spectacle of the true. I keep them with me wherever I go and I adorn myself in their wonder so everyone who meets me can also get to see a little bit of what I’ve seen along the way. Swag very much dripping in borrowed light. Unblinking. Unbinding. Unbroken.