Surrounded by a Thousand Stars

Alexandra Le

Am I alone?

I ask myself that as I lay in the grass and thank the gods that I’m able to see the stars tonight. I needed to talk to you somehow, and this was the best thing I could come up with. Others would have visited your grave. I know that your mother does that from time to time, I’ve seen her from my car during the many nights I couldn’t bring myself to approach the headstone. It's difficult to see properly due to the darkness and distance, but she always cries. I want to comfort her every time, just like you would have done, but I can’t bring myself to go near the empty grave. I hate it. I hated it when they buried it, and I hate it even more on nights like this, when you are all I can think of. So I turn to the open fields instead. I turn to the many hours we spent under the open sky and the thousand conversations we shared.

The stars are bright tonight, so bright that it feels like they’re watching me, just like I’m watching them. They remind me of a night many years ago, when we both sat on the hood of my car together. I told you about a theory I had read about, where stars in reality are lost souls watching over us. You laughed and accused me of stealing that theory from The Lion King and then called me ridiculous when I told you that I partly believed it. You had always preferred science. You believed that stars were nothing more than burning orbs in space, just like the sun. I didn’t hold the lack of creativity against you, just like you didn’t hold my hopeful naiveness against me, despite your words. There is comfort in proof, I know that’s why you loved it, but it was not due to science’s burning orbs that I stared up at the sky tonight.

No, tonight the stars are souls, just so that I can search for yours. To talk. To tell you about my day. To have someone willing to listen to me without any judgment. The conversation is all in my head of course, but I choose to believe that you could hear me nonetheless. I would have preferred your presence in flesh and bones (I would have preferred you alive), but your star is the next best thing, even if I’m uncertain which is yours.

I wonder if the astronauts long for their loved ones as they stare at the Earth from the great endlessness. I wonder if they feel as lonely as I feel right now, since we’re both miles apart from our loved ones, or if they find comfort in knowing that they have someone waiting for them.

“I will return to you,” I whisper into the cold air and imagine the astronaut doing the same. I can almost hear you whisper a response and above me, the stars twinkle in hope.