Freckle

It’s a thing easily missed. A subtle notion. A single added detail not so different from the nights when only a single star is visible. Polaris. Beta Orionis. Antares. Guardian of a place over 500 light years away. An incandescence to corrival the sun. You can’t miss it. You can’t miss it as long as you look. Some call that place heaven. It’s a thing easily missed until you see it and then you can’t unsee. It’s a single detail not so different from the nights when only a single star is visible. And then you can’t unsee it. And it reappears in the green and yellow spotted lichen creeping up the trunks of trees, found on the shaded spots of stones, on the aged wooden bench where you sometimes sit and look up. When you shut your eyes tight, rubbing with the palms of your hands because 500 light years is still too far and some nights even one star can’t be found in the sky. Some call that place heaven.