The Stars in Two Lover's Eyes
Neither of them know any constellations.
Maybe it would’ve made this moment more romantic. Maybe one of them could have started spewing random knowledge of the stars, and the other would’ve let the words wash over them, knowing they will only remember the voice that said it, not what they mean. Maybe the night sky would show them the figures that are supposedly up there all the time.
But neither of them know what they’re looking at. They just know that it should make them feel small.
Each little white dot in contrast to the pitch black is so far away that it’s almost dizzying to think about. And they’re just here – hours of a car ride from home, their friends sleeping in tents on the other side of the clearing, the dying campfire still crackling in the distance.
And so they look up, both smiling in the dark because their pinkies lock. Warmth spreads through their palms and straight to their chests until the late summer night isn’t so chilly anymore.
They don’t feel that small together. They are the last two people on earth, and they look up into the abyss and it doesn’t scare them as long as their fingers interlace. There could be nothing at all everywhere around, and their breath wouldn’t even hitch.
The weekend was a blur of sand trapped in shoes, store bought meals heated with the campfire, and laughter that stretched the skin around their mouths, their eyes. This last night, before they return home, they wanted to see the stars. Really see the stars. You can never see this many in the city.
Usually the scene goes; they point out the stars they know, they connect each and tell the story.
But they don’t know the constellations.
So instead, one of them sees the stars connect themselves. The scene hypnotizes her eyes, the lines reaching in no orderly fashion. Not to make Orion’s belt, or one of the zodiacs, but just to try and reach every other. A spider web appears before her, and with her hand clasped in the girl’s beside her, she really does feel caught. She finds that she’d gladly walk into any trap if wild curly hair was enticing her on the other side.
The other sees even the dimmest star stand out. A scatter of specks reminds her of the freckles on the girl she can’t help but gravitate to. Each time she looks at her, it’s like there is a new one that she hasn’t memorized yet, and she will memorize them all. The amount of times her heart will try to leap out of her ribs with a reciprocated gaze is the same infinite number of stars in space.
Decades later, when they look back on the night of their first kiss, they won’t remember who said what. They won’t remember any words shared between them but only that soft lips formed something. And they won’t remember who leaned over first, because neither of them know now.
In the present, an overlay of curls block out the stars. If there was any light – if any colour existed between them – brown eyes would meet a twinned set. Two hearts beat faster and faster because their system of bodies were no longer both on the picnic blanket.
Freckled body between the earth and space. Between grass and trees. Between the vastness of the universe and the body on top of her.
There are fingers tangled in dense coils, never wanting to escape. There are hands traveling under clothes, trying to learn each curve.
And the constellations watch, forgotten, and barely even known in the first place.
