Tapestries of Blazing Starbirth, The Pillars of Creation
“You have a Dipper,” he says to no one in particular as we make our way out into the darkness.
There is too much wine in my system to follow him directly, and I’m grateful he can’t see me stumbling along in the grass, tripping over chips of the wood path as I crane my neck up at the sky. We’re far enough away from the city that the stars have exposed themselves from one end to the other, and after sitting for the last few hours, it feels good to stand. He has his phone out and aimed at the sky before I notice what he’s doing.
“There it is,” he says, pointing to the Big Dipper displayed on his phone screen.
He waves his hand across the sky, pointing out constellations, and I spin along with him, resting my chin on his shoulder to peer at the star map whilst trying not to spill my wine.
“You can see Saturn and Jupiter,” he explains, gesturing into the air. “Orion’s Belt, the North Star…”
It was warm when he had arrived in the late summer afternoon, and I waited impatiently in the wicker garden chairs with a book in my hand, staring at my watch every few minutes, before I finally heard footsteps. He had appeared from around the trunk of the tallest tree and made me laugh immediately as he took a seat in a wicker chair across the way, pouring a glass of water, letting the stories of his life fall overtly from his mouth.
Hours later under the blackened sky, we’re close enough to touch, and I’m still smiling as though I’ve made it into The New York Times.
