The Lovers

Above his bed were stickers of the planets. They were now ten years old — a reason he often gave for their peeling edges. They were rather plain, as stickers go. They had no sparkles, no shine, no glow to light the sky when the switch was flicked. They appealed more to him now than they ever did at age nine.

All other remnants of his childhood had been cleared from his walls. His youth was instead boxed and hidden — the only bit of it that mattered was the content of the sky. All that mattered were the planets and the moons. All that mattered were a naïve little boy's dreams of space exploration.

He slept soundly only when his head rested beneath the system. Though he was agitated when a band poster lay above his headboard, he tumbled through. He told himself that the planets were still there, only they took another form. And then he slept all right. He dreamt of flying high above Earth and catalogued each one — for in each, he never intended to return.

While awake, he offered up his comfortable bed to God — every god, one after another — for the chance to get away, but the papers were never signed. Disappointed, as he always knew he would be, he trudged back to bed and let his lids fall.

There was plenty to keep him from living his dream, but he had a great deal of reasons to leave. He flipped and flopped, wished and cried, left and returned. He was disenchanted with the sphere; he wanted only the void.