Backs against the earth, unblinking gazes turned toward the sky. Everyone is staring at the deep blue of the night, clouds cast beneath the stars. Waiting. We’re waiting for the clouds to disappear, to go away, so that the stars can beat down on us. The sun makes us sweat, the stars make us forget.

We’ve got so much we could be doing, so much we will be doing, so much we want to do. There’s a bed and a job and a house with everything we never needed to our left—everything we had to have. We needed, wanted, begged for it all.

Give it to me. Give me more.

In the end you’ll be lying back against the earth, staring up, wanting one last thing—for the stars to appear and it all to be clear.

Watch as everyone moves in learned and rehearsed patterns, mirroring those that have walked before them. They follow the footprints, dig into them with the soles of their shoes until the imprints in the dirt are bottomless—until the path is unmistakably clear. The steps become habitual and the words believable. There’s water and shade and flat ground to follow, so they all follow, and it’s all the same. 

Some days I can't breath. 

We’re living and dying in these never-ending circles, chasing and becoming one another. Maybe there’s a barrier, I think—some mountain none of us are able to scale, but I can't see it. I look around from time to time to see the land, stretching out before us all, grazing the sky in the distance. We keep walking, retracing steps. I glance back up to see the way overgrown grass looks when the wind blows, thinking maybe I’ll finally go and see what it feels like to run my fingers through the blades, but it’s gone.