i’ve always loved looking at the sky. whether it was bright and full of clouds or dark and starry-eyed, i loved staring at it. my skies never needed clouds or stars to catch my attention.
i’ve never really figured out what i love so much about staring at the sky, even when there’s nothing in it to stare at. maybe i just love the expansiveness of it, how unending the blue sheets that encase us in our earthy bed really are.
maybe i love looking up and seeing nothing and everything at the same time. one little pinpoint in the sky could be a straight shot to the center of the universe–if there even is one. i can never imagine just how much is out there that we’ve yet to explore, but sometimes i like to try.
most nights when my family would be driving home from a play or a rehearsal or something else, all i could see when i looked up was deep blue. too many headlights on interstates or streetlights in neighborhoods for a star to be seen. but when we got home, when our car crept up into our driveway and i opened my door to go inside, i could see stars.
one good thing about small towns: the lights are never on when you want to look at stars.
i’ve always been able to look above my house and see orion. a stereotypical constellation, but one i love all the same. the first thing i do when getting out of the car after a long drive is look up. i can look up and see those three little stars that make his belt and know that i’m home.
there’s just something about the sky and the stars that inspires something paradoxical in me. they make me feel so alone and small on this little rock, but they also make me feel like we can’t possibly be alone.
when you look up and see stars that burned out eons ago, watching ghosts as they poke little white holes in blue sheets, everything you do almost feels insignificant. the universe is bigger than you or i could ever even fathom, even though all i can see of it from where i stand in my driveway is deep blue.
maybe in all of my isolation, in the suburbia that never found purchase in my veins, i found solace in the sky. i found solace in looking up at those little white holes, at orion’s belt that greeted me above my house every night without fail for seven years. maybe i felt alone at home, but i look at those stars that could be suns for planets we haven’t seen yet and don’t feel quite so lonely anymore.
i can look up and wonder what aliens see our sun and wonder if some faraway planets orbit it as they do their own sun. i can even wonder if my friends are staring at the same stars i am, and the loneliness i feel in daylight subsides.
i guess i find comfort in knowing that we share the same sky.
