Starwords

“I spy with my little eye?” you prompt.

We are lying on a rough blanket on rougher ground, our faces turned up towards the appearing stars above. We have had a romance of sky-watching. This evening is no different. I look at the moon which is rising beyond the eucalyptus trees. The silhouette of the branches and dangling leaves is stark against the white disk.

“I spy loose leaves in a tea-cup.”

You laugh. “That eucalyptus scent is so strong. I can smell it from here.”

We breathe in at the same time and, though I am not looking at you, I can sense your smile.

“It’s a good smell,” I say, “Very clean and strong.”

“A good smell,” you echo, “Like lemons, but stronger. If we went closer, it would be overwhelming. We’d better stay right where we are.”

Your fingers twine with mine. I like right where we are, and I know you do too. This is our place, on our old tatty blanket, by a bend in the river, far away from the city and its light-pollution.

“Say some starwords.”

It is my turn to smile. This was one of the first entries in our couple’s lexicon. You were so entranced by the night-sky but so unfamiliar with the language of what you saw. We came to this river. I brought my telescope. I showed you galaxies, nebulae. I explained apogee, perihelion. You said they were wonderful starwords and you were delighted. You called me a poet – me, who up until then had only ever thought myself to be a dull, old scientist - and kissed me until we forgot astronomy and we tumbled onto the scratchy blanket, desperate for each other.

I’ve brought the telescope this evening. I wasn’t going to, but you insisted that we do things properly. Years of adventuring have dented the scope’s metal case. The tripod is wonky where one of the bolts has gone missing. I have to make continuous adjustments to get it to stand straight. I could have bought a new one, I guess, but I have grown sentimental. I know that’s because of you.

“When will the comet appear?”

I hadn’t planned to come out for this comet, but you’d heard about it and insisted. You said it would be a shame to miss it. So here we are again, having stumbled along the uneven forest path back to our riverbank.

“Soon. There’s still too much light.”

“Of course,” you sigh, then echo me again. “Too much light.”

You have been patient with this, my hobby, my passion, since the beginning. Side by side in my old truck, we chased the darkness, ran from the sun. We drove for hours along bumpy tracks, the red dust churning up behind us. I felt lucky that I had found someone who would follow me into the bush, into the desert where the Milky Way was a distinct swash of glittering white above the rusty sand - a magical place where meteoroids were suddenly distinct and numerous.

You call meteoroids ‘shooting stars’ and I love that you do. Every time you have seen one - and together we have seen so many - you have made wishes, wishes that you would not tell me about. I laughed at this in the beginning. To me they were just frozen lumps of space rock burning up in the atmosphere, victims of friction, nothing more than that. Later, I became more interested in your ritual. I often wanted to discover what those wishes were as I would have done anything to make them come true. Of late, I too have started to wish on those glowing fragments. Like a child who says that they wish for more wishes, my silent hopes are always the same – that every wish you make will come true for you.

The comet is becoming visible on the horizon. It is a faint golden comma beside the bold, silver full-stop of moon. I should be setting up the telescope right now, positioning it, adjusting the focus. Instead, I pull you closer to me. You are warm, and the scent of your hair is more fragrant than the perfume of the eucalyptus.

“Comet means a star with hair,” you say. You are speaking more to yourself than to me, but I recognise the words as my own.

“From the Latin,” we say together. I grip your hand a little tighter. You listen so carefully and never seem to forget anything I’ve told you. I wonder, have you stored all our conversations in your head?

We sit in the dusk-silence which is not a true silence but one of awakening cicadas and roosting kookaburras. We have spent many nights this way, at the centre of a humming universe waiting for the light to die.

“Any sign of it yet?”

It appears gradually against the deepening twilight like an image develops in an old-fashioned photograph. It is the most beautiful comet I have ever seen: the nucleus distinct, the coma fanning out like the tail of a celestial lyre-bird.

“Nothing yet,” I say to you, “In fact I think there might be some cloud coming over.”

“Oh, no. That would be awful.”

Your disappointment for me is as keen as my disappointment for you. I never thought I would lie to you, but I will delay for as long as possible the moment when I walk to the telescope without you to look at a sky that you can no longer see.

You’ve described your condition as the night creeping into your eyes, leaving only a small speck of light in the centre of your vision. “Like looking down a telescope at a star,” you’d joked, back when you still felt like joking.

It will not be long until that last light goes out making your night endless. This cruelty cannot be cured by wishing though I have tried. The only thing I can do now is to bring you here when you ask, lie down beside you under a sky now filled with stars, and speak those starwords, yours and mine. Just an old dull scientist trying to give the stars back to you.