Cry the Stars
through golden eyes.
This was how we had met, staring at the stars, the sky, waiting for the one thing we knew would happen to happen.
It was at the bonfire, for New Years, and we were waiting for any sign of an old year ending and a new year beginning in the sky and earth and rain that sprinkled onto all of our hooded faces. I didn’t know the people around me, save for the two people who had brought me here, and then left me, sitting alone on an abandoned picnic table, staring at the stars with my knees in my arms, warm and worried.
No one else had heard what was in store for this year, they hadn’t heard about the plates shifting the earthquakes that would split most of the world in half.
But I was carefree now; the alcohol people were passing out had reached my solitary corner and had made its way down my swollen throat. There were tears pooling across my lashes, hanging and waiting, perched to fall onto the dry dirt protected from the rain by the wood slats of the picnic table.
This was how we had met. I was wobbling and crying and scared and cold. He was sober, warm, collected, calm. He had made himself my rock on New Years Eve, and I had only seen him, looked into his eyes, for a total of eleven hours, before he had left with people I didn’t know, without a second glance or a second thought.
The first earthquake just hit. My mother is crying, my younger brother in her arms with his face buried in her chest. My father is standing above us three, and I am praying he stays as strong as he looks right now, and that I stay as strong as I am pretending to be, for their sake.
My mind drifts back to the bonfire, the open field, the stars and rain and cold black sky, hardly illuminated by the crescent moon. His eyes shined like stars had fallen into them, careening until he captured them with a blink of his pools of blue.
We wade through the numerous items fallen from shelves and tables. The structure of the home around us is stable, still standing proud, a defiant blow to mother nature, but it’s insides are strewn about, room to room, items ending up in places they had never been before, broken and irreplaceable.
It was only two months ago that he had gone. Exactly. March first, the beginning of the end; of our homes, our families, our lives. The earth was revolting, standing up for itself in a way that is destined to break apart it’s own surface.
We travel from Virginia to Kansas, the former Tornado Alley now a ‘safe place’ for the east coast states. Earthquakes are showing up in places they hadn’t before; they ravage every piece of the world. Their movements are causing the tides to push over. Our old home is flooded through and through, and our entire city is under the high tide. We have no place to return to supposing the earth’s suicide ceases. We are not alone.
The procession leaving our city reminds me of a funeral.
I lay on the picnic table, staring at the stars with wide eyes. The sky is seen in every part of the world, and one assumes it stays the same with each person who views it, but the sky looming above Kansas is one of great vastness. The blinking stars go on for miles and miles.
It is cold. My hands are shaking, and tears are forming streams down my cheeks. There has been another loss, the cold and rationing of food is getting to be too much for the elders staying with us.
This sky reminds me of New Years, of how this year started out so normally, with no one knowing a thing but me and my family and the countless others who were unlucky enough to be in the secret loop of information running through the nation.
A weight makes itself present beside me, and my eyes flicker over to see two stars staring into my own eyes. I wait for their breath to fog the air before leaning closer.
He wipes away a tear with his thumb, and we stay perfectly still, letting the silence hanging between us tell us each everything we need to know.
“You’re crying out the stars, they’re lying on your cheeks, waiting to fall and be set free.”
And I let my tears fall once more.
It was at the bonfire, for New Years, and we were waiting for any sign of an old year ending and a new year beginning in the sky and earth and rain that sprinkled onto all of our hooded faces. I didn’t know the people around me, save for the two people who had brought me here, and then left me, sitting alone on an abandoned picnic table, staring at the stars with my knees in my arms, warm and worried.
No one else had heard what was in store for this year, they hadn’t heard about the plates shifting the earthquakes that would split most of the world in half.
But I was carefree now; the alcohol people were passing out had reached my solitary corner and had made its way down my swollen throat. There were tears pooling across my lashes, hanging and waiting, perched to fall onto the dry dirt protected from the rain by the wood slats of the picnic table.
This was how we had met. I was wobbling and crying and scared and cold. He was sober, warm, collected, calm. He had made himself my rock on New Years Eve, and I had only seen him, looked into his eyes, for a total of eleven hours, before he had left with people I didn’t know, without a second glance or a second thought.
The first earthquake just hit. My mother is crying, my younger brother in her arms with his face buried in her chest. My father is standing above us three, and I am praying he stays as strong as he looks right now, and that I stay as strong as I am pretending to be, for their sake.
My mind drifts back to the bonfire, the open field, the stars and rain and cold black sky, hardly illuminated by the crescent moon. His eyes shined like stars had fallen into them, careening until he captured them with a blink of his pools of blue.
We wade through the numerous items fallen from shelves and tables. The structure of the home around us is stable, still standing proud, a defiant blow to mother nature, but it’s insides are strewn about, room to room, items ending up in places they had never been before, broken and irreplaceable.
It was only two months ago that he had gone. Exactly. March first, the beginning of the end; of our homes, our families, our lives. The earth was revolting, standing up for itself in a way that is destined to break apart it’s own surface.
We travel from Virginia to Kansas, the former Tornado Alley now a ‘safe place’ for the east coast states. Earthquakes are showing up in places they hadn’t before; they ravage every piece of the world. Their movements are causing the tides to push over. Our old home is flooded through and through, and our entire city is under the high tide. We have no place to return to supposing the earth’s suicide ceases. We are not alone.
The procession leaving our city reminds me of a funeral.
I lay on the picnic table, staring at the stars with wide eyes. The sky is seen in every part of the world, and one assumes it stays the same with each person who views it, but the sky looming above Kansas is one of great vastness. The blinking stars go on for miles and miles.
It is cold. My hands are shaking, and tears are forming streams down my cheeks. There has been another loss, the cold and rationing of food is getting to be too much for the elders staying with us.
This sky reminds me of New Years, of how this year started out so normally, with no one knowing a thing but me and my family and the countless others who were unlucky enough to be in the secret loop of information running through the nation.
A weight makes itself present beside me, and my eyes flicker over to see two stars staring into my own eyes. I wait for their breath to fog the air before leaning closer.
He wipes away a tear with his thumb, and we stay perfectly still, letting the silence hanging between us tell us each everything we need to know.
“You’re crying out the stars, they’re lying on your cheeks, waiting to fall and be set free.”
And I let my tears fall once more.