regarding the stars, whilst walking home from an occasion at a friend's house, earnestly watching them for a sign of what it is they're up to, is one of the most enriching things you can do, in my experience. as you pass from lamppost to lamppost you can watch the night sky expanding and contracting, pulsing like a great celestial heart over your head, and as the lights grow fewer and further between, it becomes increasingly insistent and prominent in your field of vision, spreading itself beyond the vertical limit of the horizon, encompassing everything. you become more and more aware of the phenomenal grip the stars have, pinning you with light from all directions, never slackening their hold for a second, slowly filling with power, greatening their intensity in one part of the sky while you're looking at another until they've become larger than the sky itself, brooding morosely behind their light. seeing your reflection everywhere, you feel the warmth tug your clothing away and make you shake out all the lies you've made that night, suddenly repugnant to you in the recesses of your soul where you had no idea they were still hiding. the fiery sky burns into you, opening you up like a scalpel as it whirls around you faster and faster, setting blood free to course down the pavement in a river but it's only blood, just your blood separated from you, and you stare up all the while regardless, watching the dilation of these apparently stationary distant suns and planets, screaming to you all the secrets and dreams, desperately trying to communicate something to you over the abyss, and suddenly you realise that in spite of the intensity of your gaze, you have managed not to see that one of the lights is pushing steadily over the forever of the void, flashing rhythmically once every second, homing in on your heartbeat.
