i was sitting on the bench the same bench i always find myself sitting on when the sleep won’t come but the tired lays across my lap like a fuzzy blanket

there was a star twinkling above that seems to pulse and blink along with the pieces of coherence that sifted through the collander of my mind

we stared at one another as i tried to shrink my entirety into a quasar flying into the velvet black of eternity to commune with this wayward light shining just for me

then the eastern sky began to lighten and i knew the jealous beast of the sun’s rays would brook no other light but her own as she washed out the skies

but that star is there somewhere hidden from view by the cerulean cover of brazen mastery so washed out with solar need that all becomes secondary

i refuse to become tertiary in the grand scheme of wayward love letters from distant galaxies because of a smothering mother figure that needs to be the center

maybe the old philosophers were right and the stars once spun around the earth until we gave too much credence to the jealous sun and shifted perspectives

through this fog of exhaustion i still pulse in the irregular glow of the lone star that chose to wash over me no matter the chorus of birds singing praise to the sun

no matter where humans go in the vastness that surrounds our marbled sphere we are the aliens that managed to strangle the world that spawned us

but that lone pinhole in the construction paper sky doesn’t care nor does it seek to judge as it looks down in wonder at loneliness in the swarm of flesh