Only The Stars

PROLOGUE – A Single Moment Suspended as its Own Separate World


Darkness enveloped her. She found herself alone, her soul sitting, lonely, along the edges of abandoned roadway. No one traversed past here anymore. At least, not a soul had passed by in months. The loneliness began to creep into her waking life, wrapping its tendrils around her like a cold death. She had felt it creeping up on her, and tried desperately each day to ward off the inevitable fall.

The warm body sitting only a few feet away from her in the warmth of the protected house proved no reprieve. If anything, it made the problem worse, to be so close and yet so far away. He physically sat in the sat room, on the same tattered sofa as she, and yet he seemed to be millions of miles away, absorbed in a world so foreign to her that she sometimes felt like a stranger in her own day to day life.

She shivered and wrapped the faded blanket sitting in her lap firmly around her narrow shoulders. No matter what she did, the cold seemed to return.





Nighttime. April 2nd.

Sara whispered a string of soft words gently, quietly, letting them carry on the gentle breeze into the distant fabric of eternity. No one but the crystalline stars suspended high above her seemed to hear her quiet confession. Her fiancé lay beside her, silently, watching the same diamonds dancing millions of miles above their heads. She glanced over at him, adoration burning softly just beneath her hazel eyes, indistinguishable from the same emotion that had burned beneath her eyes only months ago. He had never known of its death. He would never know of its rebirth.

Only a few short moments ago, the words that had tumbled from his lips held her captive, immovable on the warm ground of a soft summer night.

“I’m glad you stayed with me.” He seemed much more in the moment now than he ever had in the past string of uncountable months. This was important to him; she could tell by the way he squeezed her hand when he talked.

She only heard fragments of all that he said. The words tumbled over her like cool water, each syllable sending separate shivers snaking through her body. ‘I’m glad you stayed with me.’ She almost hadn’t. She had come close to leaving, closer than she cared to imagine and closer than she would ever tell the man now lying next to her.
‘He loves you, you know.’ The memory came back to her in an instant, a lightning flash that sent more warm shivers through her body. The words melted her body, set her skin to a slow burn.

“I know I’ve been distant lately. I’ve been worried about that.”

She had noticed the distance. Lately he had been miles away, either in physical presence, or lack thereof, or simply living in another world while walking down the same hallways, sleeping in the same bed. She sometimes felt as though she were teetering on a dangerous precipice. Should she leap? She could not see bottom, could not see where this leap might lead. She had done it countless times in dreams, leapt into another life, another universe. She had danced beneath the stars, watched the sun rise over the distant horizon, all with someone else beside her. Her dreams had slowly begun to fill in the spaces in her waking life; she had begun to question her decisions and to play with the very fabric of reality. Now, she realized that that fabric was inextricably linked to someone else – more than just one someone else – and that this one person had stumbled upon the very beginnings of his own potential downfall just in time.




“He loves you, you know.” Sara sat in a wooden stool, high off the ground, staring at Catherine, who sat across the island in the middle of the brightly lit kitchen.

Sara only smiled, rather mischievously, revealing the emotions at war inside her. Her gaze fell on Catherine, but through most of the conversation Sara was absorbed in a land of memories.

“You’re all he talks about.” As she spoke, Catherine stared out the window into the flowering trees and the rickety, old, brown picket fence outside. “Frankly, I’d like to hear some new material. I can only listen to him pine over you for so long.”

“What am I supposed to do?” The question was rather abrupt, only partially connected to Catherine’s words. It was the first sentence out of Sara’s mouth in quite some time.

“What do you mean?” Catherine scrunched her eyebrows, waiting for an explanation.

“I mean…what am I supposed to do?” She had removed her engagement ring and now twirled it absent-mindedly around the countertop, the mischievous grin vanished from her face. “I…” the words stopped. She could only manage the one sentence before putting her face in her hands, exasperated.

Catherine stared at the engagement ring for a moment or two and then at Sara’s naked finger. “What do you mean?” Concern registered in her voice now, a growing sense of very real unease. “I was only going to suggest you let him down easy. Matthew, I mean. Not Aidan.” Catherine continued to stare at Sara’s ring sitting on the countertop between them as though it were a threat. “Sara.” Catherine grasped her friend’s hand, attempting to squeeze an answer from her fingertips.

When Sara looked up, her hazel eyes were swimming. “What do I do?”



Morning. April 30th

Aidan walked into the sunlit kitchen, still groggy from sleep. He watched as Sara twirled past him, too absorbed in the music that filled the small room to notice his presence. He smiled at her as she skidded behind the island in the middle of the kitchen, finally catching his eyes. She stopped dancing. She forced herself to smile back. Ahead of her, her whole day began to fall into place, some of the pieces crashing to the floor in tiny shatters.

“You’re wonderful.” He continued to stand at the edge of the kitchen, smiling sleepily at Sara and the stack of pancakes on the countertop.

Sara smiled back somewhat shyly, averting her eyes to the hardwood floor. The praise was nothing new to her; it was one of his regular phrases. By now she began to recognize just how right and wrong he was. She wanted to reply, wanted to say ‘I know,’ and ‘No, I’m really not,’ simultaneously. She wanted to fall into his arms and never leave the warmth, the comfort, the protection. She wanted to run, wanted to confess her roiling emotions, her doubts and fears, wanted to escape and run to another. The indecision left her paralyzed. She stood behind the island until Aidan sleepily shuffled towards her and wrapped his arms around near-trembling body.





Afternoon. April 16th.

Sara sat alone at the bare island in the centre of the kitchen, her engagement ring lying on the polished tabletop in front of her. As Aidan shuffled into the room, she began to speak, keeping her eyes glued to the island. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.” She didn’t look up to see his reaction. “We have nothing in common. I’m…this…it isn’t working.”

As Sara sat silently waiting for a response, Aidan walked up beside her. He pulled a bar stool close to hers, sat down silently, and placed a strong, slightly trembling arm around her waist. “What about Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” He whispered the reference softly into her ear; he referred not to the movie, but to the song, the music, and the experience behind and beyond the music.
Sara looked up at him, surprised, her hazel eyes swimming. “What?”

He took this opportunity to grasp her hand, trying to reclaim the connection that had existed between them so long ago. His eyes remained on hers as he spoke. “The music – there’s something more. You feel it; I know you do. I’ve seen you dancing, when you think no one is watching, floating on the music as though it is the only thing that exists; the world outside no longer matters; it’s as though the whole world stops spinning in that one transcendent moment.” He whispered the string of words softly, his breath brushing quietly past her ear. “That’s what you taught me. It’s what we share.”

Sara sat still, her gaze fixed once more to the flat surface in front of her.

“That’s something.” Aidan continued, still grasping, still attempting to pull her back to him. “It’s something we can start with.” He squeezed her hand gently in his, trying desperately not to let the light in her eyes – the fire that burned in her soul and drew her to him – fade out. “I love you. Is that not enough?”

Upon these words, looking into his lost expression, Sara began to remember the instances, the threads, which tied them together. She felt herself melt into a nearly-forgotten feeling of warmth as the memories raced across the inside of her eyelids, bringing her, with each blink, back to a familiar landscape.




Sara lay with Aidan beside her on the soft patch of grassy ground in their front yard. They both stared up at the midnight sky that twinkled with dozens of crystalline stars. He had approached her, lying on the lawn, alone aside from the company of the dense shrubs and a single tree, contemplating the twinkling stars, only moments before.

His voice floated softly, somberly, across the small distance between them. “I’m glad you stayed with me.”

She remembered the soft sound of his voice, the gentle touch of his hand as it brushed over hers and came to rest on top of her slender fingers. She remembered the way she had looked at him that night, with adoration burning in her eyes – an emotion that had threatened to burn out and fade away, an emotion that had flickered and died, an emotion that had burst back into the flames of life with his simple admission. She remembered the precarious cliff she had teetered on, the leap she never took. As she sat now, safe in the present moment, staring at the white surface of the kitchen island, she felt a warm comfort washing over her body, coming to her in waves that coated her present reality, sheltered it from doubt – she had not leapt, she had stayed with Aidan for a reason, through everything she had loved him.




“What about for our kids?” They didn't have kids yet, not for another few years at least. Aidan looked up at her, his expression unreadable. Sara held in her hand a phonics book she had found under the couch, covered in a thick layer of dusk.

She smiled at him. “Perfect.” The words had surprised her. She felt so far detached from the flow of events that she had simply forgotten that the series of moments she had called her life would lead her to a future; she had particularly forgotten that it would lead to a future with kids. Sara lived in the present, each moment a reality on its own with its own rules, its own consequences, its own pulsing life that existed almost separately from all other such moments. Aidan, apparently, lived in the future, lived for the future; she had forgotten this. The string of events that played out in his life played towards an outcome; the string of events that played out in her life played out for their own individual reasons, creating a world within each moment that she sometimes forgot connected eventually to the whole.




Evening. April 28th.

“Clocks slay time.” A young man sat across from Sara in a small, independently-owned coffee shop, letting his gaze fall on her for only a few short moments before scanning the room and finding another object to survey. “Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” He was staring at an empty table as he said this, a small round three-legged table that sat beside theirs. “Faulkner.” His gaze came back to her, stayed there this time. “William Faulkner was a smart man.”

Sara only partially recognized the reference. She knew who Faulkner was but she had not read anything he had written. She had never heard him speak of clocks and time and little wheels. The words tumbled through her head though, staying inside and finding their own place within her regular thoughts; they did not leave her; they were not lost on her.

Slowly, the world around her began to fade. A slight smirk crept along Sara’s lips as she slipped into another world, into a memory, and the man sitting across her faded out of her vision like the Cheshire Cat.

Sara again found herself beside Aidan, walking slowly under a crisp winter-evening sky. Their footsteps echoed through the empty night, crunching on a layer of nearly-frozen snow. Sara could not recall the conversation that had passed between them; the scene that played out was a silent one. In fact, she did not need to remember the conversation; the specific words that had passed her lips and had fallen upon her ears did not matter. She and Aidan had spoken of regular things: their respective days at work, comments overhead throughout the day, memorable conversations held and overheard, remarks about the beauty of the city at night – nothing of consequence.

‘That,’ Sara thought, ‘was the most important aspect.’

The realization sent chills across the surface of her skin and then settled into a feeling of warmth, almost an anesthetic to the world outside. Sara and Aidan had not discussed any life changing topics; they had not been bothered with trying to change the world. They had simply walked, contented in the beauty of city, the brilliance of life itself, with an overwhelming feeling of peace settling over them, turning the cold night into a memory of warmth, companionship, and connection. She could feel the connection then – the feeling that linked her to Aidan, pulled her irresistibly towards him, the rope that saved her from floating out to sea, from falling off the precipice, forever lost, in times of crisis. It was not the things they had in common – the objects, hobbies, friends, thought patterns…. It was the experiences.

As reality faded back into Sara’s vision, she understood the sly smile that slid across the young man’s face across from her. She recognized, more fully, the quote now – not from any literature, and not as something attached to a name, an author, but as a moment in her own life, in fact a collection of moments when the little wheels failed to click, when the clock stopped and allowed time to fly, to freeze, to create an entire world within a moment, separate from the regular flow of events. She had gotten caught up in these events by herself so often that she had forgotten to appreciate their presence, forgot to appreciate how transcendent and changeless they could be when shared with another, how they stop time and unite the entire landscape into a single perfect moment, how they could tie two people magnificently together.

When Sara spent these moments with Aidan, she knew undoubtedly the reason she loved him. ‘If clocks slay time, then language must inevitably slay experience, emotion, and reduce it to only the closest representation that a speaker can create.’ The experiences that tied Sara to Aidan were eternal, beyond the ebb and flow of time and beyond the constructions and the constraints of language.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” She whispered the words softly. If the young man sitting across from her heard them, he did not question them. He got up, smiled at Sara, nodded his farewell and left for the back of the coffee shop.




Afternoon. April 30th.

Back in the kitchen, sitting at the island with Aidan beside her, Sara looked up at him, seeing the uncertainty, the fear, in his eyes.

“It’s enough.” She whispered the words softly, bringing her gaze from the countertop to meet his eyes. “It is most definitely enough.”




Nighttime. May 1st.

Sara sat, alone again, beneath the starry sky. The world around her was silent aside from the silky sounds of the night. This moment, like so many others, she realized, would stop time; events surrounding herself and her little patch of land would coalesce into a perfect pearl, a world in its own right existing only for a moment and existing forever, simultaneously in the world without clocks, without little wheels clicking away the moments.

This world, this tiny creation, however, would be different from the rest. Within these events lay the realization that each tiny world was connected to every other. In times of crisis, in times of unsurity, the world would not crumble nor would it break into irreparable pieces. These tiny worlds, Sara found, were both her blessing and her curse. She had tended to see each moment as separate, as existing in its own right, as a moment primed for perfection. All moments could not be perfect to all people – these tiny worlds failed to capture that truth. All moments also led to an outcome – isolated, them seemed disconnected, disjoint. Together, however, they created a landscape of beauty where the cold encapsulated in one moment was offset by the warmth in so many others. Without the cold, could one fully appreciate warmth?

In her tiny world then, existing at this exact moment, lay the pearl of realization, a map of her world. This was the essential piece of the puzzle; this was the thread that tied her not only to Aidan but to the entire world in all its brilliance. As Sara looked up at the crystalline stars suspended in the cool night sky, she saw reflected in them her own little worlds – each a moment suspended in the fabric of eternity, each contributing to the magnificence and the beauty of the whole.