Counting Stars
Five years after scientists discovered
Where the edge of the universe lay,
And all of the stars were counted and confirmed
Into proper categories to stay,
I found myself and a hastily packed suitcase
Standing in the doorway of a rented room.
As I watched the rain drip from my nose,
Creating dark craters in the worn carpet,
I contemplated just what birthed my woes.
And realized then that I was in that apartment,
And the scientific method said so,
All at the fault of you.
Satisfied with the flawed test results
I lay upon the bed to admire my faults
And stared out the lonely window.
There were no stars.
On the breeze that blew in from outside
I swore I smelt the grass upon we laid
That sweet spring night oh so long ago
When to the world I swore I’d love you
Until there were no stars left to count.
But look where that promise led, my dear!
Look how broken hearted I am as I lie here
Just as how to you I had lied that night.
But how was I to know that I wasn’t right?
Did we not deceive each other into believing
That what we had was not simply dreaming?
But now all the stars are numbered
And so are our days.
In my grief I never once cared to notice
That the warm shirt I wore was yours once,
Or that the ring on my left finger
Was of your promise a reminder.
In my blindness I cast my eyes to the walls
And noticed something peculiar.
In the smooth paint I saw puckerings
And I couldn’t decide what they were.
To feed the curiosity of my modern mind
I approached one like a cat to its prey
And was astonished at my find.
Believing it to be impossible,
I scratched off the old paint
And discovered a small star glowing faint,
The remnants of a child’s dream to confine the sky
To everything within their naive eyes.
Stickers on the wall to create free wishes,
Never once of their falsehood suspicious.
Around the room I scanned my eyes,
And finding yet more without surprise
I set about to scratching the rest free.
My fingers raw, nail ragged, hours gone,
I turned off the light with newfound certainty.
The darkness was gone, banished by the lights
So small, so fragile, but countless and bright.
My body shook, the tears ran freely
As quickly as shooting stars on a spring night
And everything that once was suddenly
Shattered.
No matter what computers had said,
No matter what scientists did to fill their heads,
No matter how long they peered through their telescope,
Nothing they found could have created this hope.
In all their wise blindness they had overlooked
A child’s secret dreams covered by paint.
And here was I, following their method,
Thinking myself to be perfected,
Giving up that endless chase for meaning
Thinking it to be so demeaning
When a child could show me how far I’d gone awry
Because there were still stars left to count in the sky.
