A Picture-Perfect Moment In California

I looked up at the sky, mesmerized by the glistening stars and the cosmos, and I cried. Not because I was sad — perhaps I was? — but because my surroundings were breathtaking.

Every hue. Every glistening light. Every vibration flowing through me at the speed of light, in slowmotion.

Time was of no concern during that trip we took filled a void and nourished our souls. A picture-perfect moment in California.

The past few months emerged and collided into a perfectly imperfect adventure. Everything from the past was irrelevant, and the future did not matter in that given moment.

I was alive — not just alive, but living. As the breeze caressed my tan skin, every sound spoke to me; each breath connected me to every organism. Everything hit me like Nirvana. Every story moved through my veins. I wasn’t intoxicated, but I was drunk on that night sky.

The full moon glowed and warmed that Sunday evening, so vibrant as she lit the backyard. My eyes glistened in admiration. I swear, that night, love glowed on my skin. I swear, that night, electricity was sent to every bone I housed — a house that was briefly for two.

Everything meant nothing, yet everything was felt so deeply. Every seed I planted grew and unraveled as we curled up underneath a blanket of stars. Life was moving and stopping. Life was present and absent. It was and it wasn’t.

That night, a stream of goodbyes made its way down my cheeks, flowing into the horizon and drowning the night goodbye.

A sea of stars, a sea of stories, a sea of hope, a starry ache.

I lay on the grass, marveling at the stars and captivated by the planes leaving traces of memories and looping into destinations unknown.

Going. Going. Going. Gone.

I could have stood there forever. But things are never quite as they seem.