The Us I Thought We Were ↹ [Poetry]

Looking Up

I look up at the stars and wonder how I ever thought they could hold anything other than dreams.

I look up at the stars and see them falling to the earth because they have become so heavy with wishes that the only way for them to come true is to form a blemish upon the outer layer of the earth.

I look up at the stars and remember all of the dreams I sent up to them with a big long hard blink of my eyes when I was a young girl at the age of seven.

I look up at the moon and wonder why it doesn't illuminate the world the way the sun does.

I look up at the moon and see the craters that it has covering it because of all of the times it got caught protecting the world from meteors, it bares its scars proud for all of us to see.

I look up at the moon and remember my wandering mind asking why it ever had to hide because it is so beautiful why wouldn't it want to show its face all of the time?

I look up at the spaces in between and wonder what hides in the blackness surrounding all of the wishes.

I look up at the spaces in between and see them slowly covering up the moon and all of its beauty just for bits of time so that it can uncover it again when we realize how much we miss the beautiful formation watching over us.

I look up at the spaces in between and remember how much it and the beautiful yet tragic midnight sky resemble what I'm trying to find in this world.

The inescapable truth that the sky holds all of the answers.

But we can only see them when the sky is at it's worst, baring its scars for all of us to see instead of hiding them with a cool cover of noon.

I guess that's why our parents always made us go to sleep before the moon came out when we were little.

They didn't want to see us pegging our wants and needs on the possibility that a star may fall and hit the earth, leaving the skin of our home raw and exposed, like the moon.

Because we don't like it when our scars are on display.

And that's what the midnight sky is, isn't it?

A reminder that our dreams are the scars we couldn't hide on our own.

An impossible array of lights shining for everyone to see.

And it's just as hard to reach our dreams as it is to reach the stars.

But not impossible.

So stop letting people tell you the sky's the limit when all of our footprints are on the stars.