In Which Dora Named The Stars

It was 3 a.m. when I asked you what you were doing, half-awake, half-drunk,
half-lying on a chez lounge on your belly in the front lawn.

You had looked sad all evening,
like happiness was a thing
that a person could physically have
or touch
and someone stole that thing
from you.

The world had not been kind to you and I wished for a long time that I could have changed that.

But suddenly this time you were smiling.
You were looking up at the stars and you were smiling so brightly that I couldn't make you out from a distance.

"I named them all" you told me.

I took the hook of your bait
and lowered it into my mouth
and I asked what you meant.


Your smile bent around your chin like a sunrise.

"I named all the stars after my worries; I named each star I saw in the sky after a problem that I had. Just now. Or a thing that I was worrying about but couldn't get rid of, kinda like a… an invisible sliver stuck in the tippy tip of your finger, if that makes sense. Where it hurts and you could feel it all the time but you can’t reach it to get that pain out of you. Kinda sorta like that.

I had a real lot of them."

"Why did you do that?"

"Well, because...I guess because they're both going to be here long after I'm not."

The stars were out like a thousand holes in a pitch black blanket just above us, but when you looked at me, everything was morning.