A Pensieve for Your Thoughts

Leaning back on a deck chair, front legs off the ground--not enough to be precarious, but enough to push against calf muscles. Feet rooted to earth by the interplay of Newton, eyes locked on the stars. The skies here aren't ideal for stargazing. We're in a bit of a bowl, with the mountain for which the town is named rising up on three sides, and so many trees that the ring of the horizon is furred and vague in the black of night. But it's also miles in any direction to proper civilization, so I guess the lack of light pollution balances out the abbreviation of the starry sphere.

Millions of miles away, distances beyond imagining, globes of hotly burning gases are... not suspended, but self-contained in pockets separated from one another by vast, empty space. Scientists have found ways to fill the void with their math and telescopes, but it doesn't erase the sense of lonely insignificance. Basking in the feeling is a bit melancholy, it's true, but there is also a soothing element to it. I think perhaps it comes from what we like to call perspective.

The scuffle of feet on wood and clack from the gate latch bouncing shut. No longer alone with the stars, but not quite in society either. You are quiet too, in my daydream. So much talking, so much catching up and concern. I have been torn between the childish desire to avoid you, because everybody wants to be with you and I don't want to be 'everybody,' and the human desire to say hello, ask how you've been, mention that thing that made me think of you recently. So perhaps it's no surprise that if I wanted to orchestrate a meeting it would be here on the rooftop, when we have both drawn away.

Silence.

What words would I make you say, if I could? There are too many questions that dare not be asked. And history suggests that I've tried often to reach out to you, but rarely with a response.

Writing a story suggests a rhyme and a reason, but sometimes they don't exist. Sometimes it's nothing but miscommunication and random moments of connection, glad in their own way, but confined to that time and place. I guess I just don't know what to make of the awkward silences. That's why, when we sit together on the deck above the old classroom (for all I know, it exists only in memory, perhaps demolished during recent renovations) in this moment in my head, we aren't speaking. Because somehow it's more gracious, less fumbling, and though there aren't any words to speak, it's still enough just to sit with you.