Another night under the
stars with you and I can't help but compare it to the last one. It's
December now, the cold creeps in under heavy clothes as we lay on our backs and look up at the night sky. Then it was
September and I paid no mind to my nearly naked skin covered lazily by a thin blanket. Tonight we hold
mittened hands and study the stars intently. We're looking for falling ones, watching the
meteor shower, gasps of
excitement, "I saw one!", "I saw it too!", and more rarely
disappointment when one sees one that the other missed.
Too many falling stars to make wishes on tonight, and it always feels cheap to wish on a falling star that you see during a meteor shower. You know that stars will be falling, you came outside to watch them, if you wished on them it would be like fishing for compliments. That other night though, there was no meteor shower, I was there for the stars and for you. I only saw one bright streak across the sky, and I made a wish on it.
We pay attention to the sky with the same intensity that we paid to each other that night months ago, every motion crucial as we inched nearer to each other. A misstep could be made at any moment, so we studied breath and strength and whispered words until you were holding me in your arms. Until you got the courage to kiss me for the first time, and it's like finding solid ground beneath me.
And now, thousands of kisses later. Thousands of falling stars later too, thousands of wishes. This night is so different from the other one but it feels the same. The wish that I made that night, cheesy as it was, was about you. I wished that you would be happy, and that was all, that you could find a way to quiet your demons. Tonight I remembered that wish, and like to think that it came true in part (demons are never completely silent, no matter how hard we wish them to be), and that you're happy right now as we lay next to each other and watch the stars fall down.