Keep Looking Up

I miss the stars.

When I was a girl, you could see them from town.

Now, only a few are able to wink through the layer of smog and city lights.

Where there were once shooting stars, there are only satellites.

I mourn the stars.

I long to live in a place where they might exist, too.

I used to look at them every night.

I'd look and look and look.

And I'd wonder about who else might be seeing them.

There is something about looking at the stars that makes one feel so wondrously small.

There is something about looking at the stars that makes one feel so wondrously significant, too.

Stars connect us to times and places we'll never truly get to visit. So vast. So familiar.

My father was the one who taught me to look up.

He was a troubled man, but in those moments we stared up at the gaping maw of the universe, he was able to set aside the terror in his heart. He was able to just exist, to be the purest version of himself- the one untainted by the cruelty of this world.

The stars were his escape.

He made them mine, too.

He told me once, that he'd sometimes climb onto the rickety roof of his childhood home to see them. He'd sit under the glory of starlight and pretend that he was anyone else, that he were anywhere else. He said when he looked at the stars, he could convince himself that he was some other boy, one who was loved and fed and whose clothes weren't filthy and tattered. He could pretend that anything was possible.

I liked that.

On clear nights, father would haul out his and Ma's frayed wedding quilt. He'd spread it on the grass and lie down, patting a spot beside him. I'd curl into his warmth and he'd stroke my hair. And then we'd look at the constellations. We'd wish upon the shooting stars. We'd wonder where planes blinking red against the backdrop of galaxies were taking their passengers. And he'd tell me stories.

Stories about before he became a monster.

Frogs he caught with his brothers.

How he'd torment the turkeys on the farm.

The way he'd run barefoot in the grass.

The candy he'd buy for a penny at the corner store.

How his father had loved cameras and radios and tinkering.

How his mother had planted flowers and crocheted.

He'd tell me about growing up poor and filthy and rotten.

About how he got a job at the mill and bought a T-top Corvette with his sixth paycheck. How the women had swooned for a chance to sit in the passenger seat. It's how he'd won over his first wife.

He'd tell me about our family. About the golden retriever he bought to celebrate my birth, the playhouse he built, the pool table that had a permanent place in the sun-room of our family home.

And all the while we'd lie beneath a blanket of stars and mourn.

He mourned the life he lost.

I mourned the childhood I would never have.

The version of my father who held me and whispered stories under the stars was the only version I could ever really love.

We could both pretend.

I could pretend he didn't hit me and scream and tell me I was worthless.

He could pretend I didn't hate him for it.

We'd lie there until the blanket turned soggy and reality came crashing back in.

There was always a moment when I could see he was entertaining just staying the way we'd been... when he was considering shirking the overcoat of evil he wore to guard his heart and just becoming the father I so badly wanted him to be.

But the moment would pass, and the coldness would settle back into his steely eyes, and we'd go back to the truth that neither of us could escape.

He'd stalk inside with the wet quilt draped over his shoulder like some kind of dead animal.

I'd stand in the yard awhile longer and look up.

And I'd wish.

And my heart would ache for the tremendous possibility that hid in the blackness between the stars.

My heart still aches for that possibility.

My heart still aches for everything that could have happened but didn't.

I miss the stars.

I miss the world of only a decade ago, where I could see them from my bedroom window.

I want them back.

I want to fill up all the empty spaces inside my heart with stars.

So as long as there is even one, I'll keep looking up.

And I'll wish.

*AI art image.