Night Sky In A Small Town

When I was five, someone told me the night sky could connect everybody.

I always liked that. How looking upon a star was like a secret pact you made with other people.

Growing up in the city I couldn’t stargaze much. But whenever the sky was clear I would always take the time to look.
A tiny shiver of warmth would work its way down my spine and everything would start to look up.

It was mooring. Ballast. Flotsam and jetsam. And whenever I felt untethered I would just take the train a few stops down. Close to the station there would be a small corner shop. And a sea breeze blowing in from just out of sight. And a Popsicle, maybe. And maybe then sickly sweet syrup smeared around the mouth.

It would be slightly cold or slightly warm as the day turned to night. And then the sunset. Hot asphalt or cool grass against my back. Sometimes for hours.

The last train back left at ten and I would wait at the platform, sweating/shivering, eating something on the way back. Getting in late. But they would let me be. I was happy to hear the growling of my stomach.

The few times when dinner would be set, it would taste like getting caught in the storm while playing hooky from school or the sight of a familiar face in the sea of bodies at a party.

Some time after Jules left I took that train down a few stops. It was as slow as I remembered.

There weren’t many people aboard. A bearded grandfather with a cap and pipe smoking quietly in one corner; a schoolmasterly type, full-moon spectacles and balding, humming to himself as he read from the pile of books at his side; and then there was that one person your eyes kept straying to. A girl with a perpetual half-smile tugging at the corner of her lips. A secret. It plays about her mouth, now on one side and now on the other. I wonder who will be given that secret, brighten her eyes for a second.

Somewhere inside I feel calmer. I look out the window, stealing glances at her from time to time.

Here.

The streets the same, but no cigar. The corner store clerk, a lugubrious little man, gone. Instead a young boy, restless but sharp who patrols the counter. I get a Popsicle. A taste from memory lost, replaced by the present.

And soon, the sun is setting and I watch, dripping syrup on the pavement, vivid splashes of red on gray and asphalt. One thing to be said about pollution: bloody marvelous sunsets.

I find that spot in the patch of grass that once knew me, time and time, long ago.

My brain is cooking slowly. And I close my eyes. The wait is not long.

Hamlet’s firmament is beautiful as it fades to dark. And then they come, pinpricks. Shafts of light millennia distant. First the sky is but a blank and then as soon as you see the first one there are more. Sight filled with nothing and light.

But there is no warmth. Just cold. How many others are looking at the sky now? At the same stars? Fifteen hundred people? All staring at the same patch of brightness in eternity. No closer to each other. For some a moment of distraction, faint whimsy. And how, from what I wanted to say someday or sometime when someone was around? How many words imagined on a staircase, biting and scarring in their burning intensity of wit? They flicker and are gone.

Is there no mark on those who scan the sky? They will pass by without a word or glance, they go. Can you tell those that share this one moment? Should you not be able to sense, if not see, those that glimpsed that same patch of the celestial? From their walk, a twinkle in the eye? But no. What is it but staring at rocks?
Somewhere I know I’ve been alone for a while now. But not lonely.

A giggle. I turn. And there is the cashier boy. He doesn’t see me. A wind is blowing. Strong, from the south. He is jumping down a series of the rocks. With every gust and zephyr he jumps, one to another, lips red with syrup, leaps and bounds. Hermes in torn shorts and slippers. Soon he is gone from sight and then I stand.

The café is more a coffee shop. But there are outdoor seats. I am about to pass by, but she is there. That secret of hers, it curves even more beautiful in the twilight. For a second I am lost. I sit down. She and her friends get up to leave.
I go inside to order.

Then, through the window I see them. She and him, a quiet stolen kiss, hidden from view. And then they both smile: slight, teasing, tender; and somewhere in this I start to feel. Slowly I see, holding hands, they leave.
Happiness. Strangers. Ships passing in the night. I thank you for your gift, unknowing regardless.
Outside the wind is picking up again. A line of clouds far away to the north is moving across the sky. For a moment there is the bliss of oblivion and then, reluctant, I open my eyes. It is the 17th of August.

The coffee tastes good and like times before, this night will someday pass.