She Belongs to the Stars

The night was cold, and amongst the tall grasses, in a folding lawn chair, sat an old man looking up at the night sky. How the chill must have nipped at his ancient bones, how his stiffening joints must have ached as he sat, neck craned back, counting quietly in a voice hushed by the softly moaning wind. His memory played scenes of fireflies, of crickets, of dancing beneath those sky- bound patterns. His memory played scenes of fireflies, of crickets, of dancing beneath sky- bound patterns. Content creased the multitude of folds on his face, his faint smile pointed towards something visible only to himself, one gnarled finger, shaped like an ancient tree root, gently tracing those patterns etched into the canvas of the stars above him.

“They’re drawn around you, my dear,” he whispered into the wind. “What company you keep now. Soon I’ll be with you and we’ll run together amongst the myths.”

It was a strange final request, that the nurses that constantly floated in and out could agree on. The woman, frail and fragile in her ever- beeping hospital bed, wanted to feel the wind on her face on last time. She wanted the grass on her skin. She wanted the air in her lungs to be real air, the kind the kind that can only come from the outdoors. This in and of itself wasn’t strange, it was the fact that it wasn’t possible. It was the fact that if she couldn’t have it outdoors, she wanted it inside. Everyone knows that last requests are special, sacred in a way. They hold a certain weight that their cousins, the wants of those with years ahead of them, could never have. No one could look her in her thin, defiant face and tell her no. So, with the love that only someone watching their beloved withering in a hospital bed can muster could, he brought her the hills. He brought her the grass. He brought her leaves and flowers. He brought her jars of river water and stuck plastic, glow- in- the- dark stars to her ceiling and tried to recreate her a landscape. There, in a crude facsimile of the outdoors, he held her too thin hand and listened to her monitor slow… and slow… and finally come to a stop. 

White rooms. Sterile walls. Rooms that reeked of disinfectant. Somewhere, a child was crying, screaming. The place made him shudder, but he was there for her sake. She shivered, watching the walls with wide, scared eyes that darted back and forth from wall to chair to door, her hands turning ceaselessly like the waves against a rocky shore. The news wouldn’t be good. That they both already knew. It was a feeling that lived deep in your gut, one that was certain, one that promised bad news, one that you tried to ignore but couldn’t at the same time. Still, he was here, and he was strong for her, the girl with the stars in her eyes and the waves on her lap. He watched her from the corner of his eye, the way she sat ramrod straight, trying to appear brave, but he could see her lip quivering just a little, barely enough to notice. He watched the line between her eyebrows appear and then disappear… and then appear and then disappear. Too stubborn to ever admit she was scared, she was the first to hear the footsteps, even though she jumped the most violently at the opening of the door. He, however, cried the hardest at the news. In private, though, where she would never hear. He would be brave, for her sake, no matter how hard that would prove to be. 

She’d been having headaches. Deep ones, the ones that can’t be taken away with a few Advil and a nice, dark room. She wasn’t herself. She was always tired, her balance was off. She didn’t feel good. They knew that something was wrong, but neither wanted to accept it. He wanted to take her to the doctor early, but she said no every time. She was scared. She wouldn’t tell him, but she was scared. It was something about those rooms, those endless hallways- she just wasn’t going. She wouldn’t go. It would just get better on it’s own. It had to, right? Reluctantly, he agreed. There was nothing that he could do that would force her to go. That was, until he found her, sitting, her head between her knees out beneath the stars. Tears ran ragged streaks down her face, her fingers wrapped in the thick curls of her hair. Dizzy, she could barely stand, thought she was going to pass out, was convinced of it. The pain was daggers through her head. It hurt in her eyes, in her teeth. He knew it was serious when she let him take her to the doctors. He begged the stars to take mercy on her. 

It was her that first found their spot. She’d found it on her own and then dragged him unwillingly out with her afterwords. He had had hundreds of excuses which he had tried to use on her as she drove, not listening to a word that he had said. He had work. He needed to go to the grocery store. There was that home improvement project that he’d been meaning to do. He really wasn’t in the mood for walking. His head hurt. She didn’t listen. She was deaf to his complaints. He’d almost had to run to catch up with her as she made her way up the path, stopping at the edge of a grassy clearing. Dusk was turning to night, the fiery orange tones of the sky cooling into dark blues and blacks littered with stars. That night they danced amongst the constellations, the tall grasses caressing their legs as the crickets sung their quiet songs- the only two people in the world.

Everyone around him was the same. They gathered in large herds and they didn’t know why. They made bad decisions resulting in sometimes serious consequences, and they didn’t know why. They followed the rules set by their surroundings and they didn’t know why. That’s why she stood out-standing alone with her eyes on the stars. She believed that there were people up there, that no one was ever really lost, just a little further away for the time being. It wasn’t her shy smile that did him in, it was the way that, when she was out there staring up at the stars, she barely noticed that he was around. She was preoccupied with her own world, her own thoughts, her own galaxies. He turned his head skyward, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that she was seeing but his eyes kept turning back to her, the girl who belonged to the stars.