the stars

i.

he was sitting on the ledge of his roof, kicking his feet and trying to get comfortable.

above him were the millions of stars, the sky abundant in the freckled shining. he longed to grasp them, but even the mind of a seven year old boy told him otherwise.

he wasn't tall enough, and when he thought about it, he wasn't happy about it either.

the vast array of bombardments a starry night portrayed was almost like a gift to him. one better than a pet dragon, or a cake bigger than his dad's car for his birthday.

because according to gus's speculations on the life he'd lived as far as his mother could tell, he was the only boy who liked the stars.

maybe tom, who lived next door, liked the stars too, he didn't know, but never once when gus spent a weekend night in his treehouse had he heard tom say, "you know, the stars look pretty cool tonight," or "the sky is amazing."

so gus was bound to assume what he did. it seemed pretty logical. if one did not admit something the other did, then perhaps one didn't want to admit something at all.

when he laid on his back, fidgeting from the curved plates beneath him, he gazed up to the stars and tried to he hear if they spoke to one another, or if he could picture a constellation ajoining them together into one civilisation.

but alas, the night was quiet, as it almost usually was if it weren't for the owls. or the crickets. or the breeze.
on some nights he would be lucky to see the stars that moved, or so he would think.

he remained mistaken and uncorrected when he thought that those moving lights were indeed moving stars, but contrary to popular belief, they were only airplanes or of the sort that noisily drifted above the black clouds.

another speculation that occurred to him; if the sun was bright enough to whiten the clouds that welcomed day, than surely the stars were bright enough to whiten them as well.

but they didn't, therefore he had no choice but to believe that the clouds were in fact, black, whenever the sun slinked away and forgot it lived the next day.