As I lie on the top of this boat with you,
gazing at this inky expanse peppered
with tiny lights from the past,
I can’t help but feel insignificant, but –
– I am grounded by the sound of your voice,
by the waves lapping against the sides
of this wooden vessel, threatening to
knock us into the dark water below.
I am not scared, because I am too in awe
of the sight above me. It almost feels as if
I am looking down on these lights, like
they are instead tiny fish winking from below.
Look, there’s Orion and his belt, his arrow
pointed high. Don’t you think that one there
looks like a turtle? And if you squint
hard enough that one could be…
I’ve never seen a shooting star before.
As this tiny light streaks across my field of vision,
I am silenced by its beauty.
How magnificent, that piece of burning rock.
How lucky am I to be holding your hand,
as we gaze up, aside complete strangers,
all from different angles, at this snapshot
of sky from a millennium already passed.
Another tiny fireball shoots across above us.
A collective gasp and then exhale. A wish.
We’ve been here long enough that we can
now make out the shape of the Milky Way.
This sky is entirely the same yet also entirely
different from the one back home. Here,
we are far from land, far from light. It’s just us
and our history. Time moves differently up here.
We are part of this, you and I.
We too are floating. But a speck
on a speck, in a sea of specks, maybe
watched by someone, something else.
read the rest of this anthology here x
