The Wish Keepers
by Danielle
She lies in bed every night, and pulls her curtain back to stare at the night sky. She likes to think that by looking at them with wonder and hope that the stars are doing the same to her. She looks at the pin pricks of light as they shimmer in the darkness. She’s little, and she likes to rest her hand on the cool glass in the summer time . . . looking at the imperfections in the glass, the divots of imperfection that she can trace her fingers over, continuing to stare at the stars and the answers she thinks they hold.
She gives those stars her hopes and dreams; her pains; her humiliations; rejections; discomforts; celebrations and happiness. She gives the stars her secrets and her desires.
Sometimes she forgets her nightly ritual, but when she remembers, it is a tidal wave of all that she holds dear that she projects towards them.
Glimmering above her: the stars keep her secrets, the stars keep everything. Time changes but the path of the stars remain constant.
She grows and ages, moving from the room with the bed against the window. Her eyesight weakens and the gap in her curtain now holds only the brightness of the moon and early morning sunlight.
But, there are times when she will go out in the middle of the night or when she is walking home that she will stop and stare at the stars. She feels a little foolish, and anyone watching would think she was strange. She will stop and stand in place, to smile at the stars, a blanket of shimmering dust above her.
If she is alone, she will take the chance to lie upon dampening grass to take them in, pretending that she must grip the earth at her fingertips, clutching handfuls of grass, lest she fall off the spinning curve of the earth. She imagines that if she doesn’t hold on that she will be flung into space to float amongst the stars forever. A secret that the earth would give them to keep.
But the moment passes, as the chill around her grows, and so she stands up and readies herself to head inside. Casting one more long look upwards, grateful to her old friends, the wish keepers in the sky.
Danielle | @inkpad89
Painter.