When Stars Appear

As last week’s ceremony settles, I’ve felt drawn towards sharing glimpses of the experience not in a narrative as I have in the past, but through different forms of writing. Ones I don’t play with so often—like ode and metaphor and haiku.

I’m working on collection of these written delights, but this allegory felt best flying solo:

At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. A shimmer where there’d never been one. A foreign star, flickering with unfamiliarity amidst a well-mapped sky.

“Surely the cosmos jest,” I thought to myself. 

The heavens have remained the same for as long as I’ve been gazing into them, and I’ve traced those adorable dippers so often I could sketch them with my eyes closed. 

And yet, something was undeniably different in the night sky.

I could feel the disturbance in the way the darkness shifted. 

The other stars, the ones I’d always known, no longer aligned the way they once did. 

They looked at one another somewhat askew.

And they’d made room for a newcomer.

How strange, to witness the cosmos rearrange itself. 

Captivating, though.

So I stand beneath the sky, patiently waiting, keenly watching.

Wondering with awe, what new constellation might appear.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander