Stargazer

Do you love me? He had asked because he could no longer stand it. This woman had stood by his side for years, looked him in the eyes and told him the truth while the rest of the world lied to him. Sometimes he couldn’t shut her up. Philosophy, controversies, content in every shape or form blurting out of her mouth like her life depended on it. Yet he could never figure out where this women’s passion came from. When she felt, which was all the time, she sang, she spoke, she whispered. Fear of a topic was unheard of. With one exception. Never once had the word Love spilled off of her satin painted lips. Before she answered he wondered if the word no would feel like sitting at the base of a fresh avalanche or whether his heart would burst with lightning bolts if she said that lovely syllable; yes.

Do I love him? Do the birds look to the heavens before they take their flight? Do the priest hear their callings in the rhythm of their pulse or the devil in a thunderstorm? Do the lost never get found? Does the light never illuminate the darkness? Does the deep swallow the shallow? Does the whole devour the halfhearted? Her mind thought about that first question followed by a thousand more and wondered what it would be like if she loved him, and him only. Would she strike him down in his tracks and use every reason known to man to love him, to just be a woman, his women. That’d be nice. His woman, just like mama said I would have to be when I was all grown. But what mama don’t now doesn’t hurt. And what he doesn’t know will stroke his tenderness lovingly. Maybe I do love him… 

I love you just like I love the stardust and eclipses from my past planet, she said as she looked him straight in the eyes. Neither blinked.

She was always saying weird shit like that. But that’s why he loved her. The way her mind worked, like she came from somewhere else, far, far away from any being on earth. Otherworldly, he use to whisper in her ear. When she said she had loved him like the stardust he pictured white sand placed in the palms of her hands slowly running through the cracks between her fingers into the space of emptiness, nothingness and black. He wished she had said she loved him like she loved the sun or the moon. But he was stardust and an eclipse.

xoxox

Lindsay Reva