starry-eyed

i was stretched on my back, on a picnic table on a deck, looking up in astounding delightedness. shooting stars and fireflies made movement in the stillness. my mind emptied of care, all thoughts were sparse. i was a part of the nighttime and the darkness as it all exploded behind my eyes – shooting stars and those pretty, flitting fireflies, the first night i ever saw them.

the blackness was pinched with pinpricks of white light, so unusually bright, so usually dimmed by cities and society. and across the sky the milky way shifted. i felt uneasy and so comfortable with my momentary insignificance, feebleness.

the sky is so big. the stars are so far away. i am the smallest part of the ever long. but i am all of it too, and all of it is born and lives in me. 

so maybe the world is small and i am bigger than i know. because i can express these illogical, incomprehensible feelings. i can make whatever meaning i like of the emotion that floods my being. i can find my place within the life i’m living and accepting for myself. i have chosen this. and i am so satisfied with that. 

i breathed into the night and exhaled a sigh of content. 

i don’t know if i’ve ever seen a night sky so pretty.