Among the Stars

“Shoot for the moon,” they said. “Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” And so I did. I aimed for the moon, shot higher than I had ever dared, higher than I had ever dreamed.

I didn’t quite make it, but that’s okay. They were right – I landed among the stars. And it was beautiful.

It was darker than I had imagined among those tiny pinpricks of light. From Earth, they always seemed so close together – little communities of stars joined together in their constellation neighborhoods. But once I was out there, I realized how lonely they truly were. Even the closest stars were hundreds of thousands of miles apart.

And now I am among them, a dark spot floating in a dark sea, occasionally passing other shadows, blacker than the inky void that serves as our background. Sometimes when I remember who I once was, I search for something to reach for again, but I think I’ve gone as far as I can go. There’s nothing left to reach for, at least nothing that I can see. I can’t even move backward because there is no backward; there is no direction at all. There is only blackness and shadows and tiny pinpricks of light too far away to reach in one timeline or a hundred.

I long to search for the inspiration and motivation I once had, but it’s hard to see by the light of stars and shadows.