You looked up and the stars were dancing around in the night sky. They leapt up and swirled around creating different shaped patterns moving faster than they could think. The moon fumbled his way along the paths of light the stars created for him wearing sunglasses to filter out the brightness while whistling a familiar tune. It seemed to stroll along so naturally. All the stars and the moon looked down and all the people below looked up wanting to see something but nothing could be seen from that far away. You could look up and only see the whole world consumed by an infinity of black waves. But when you get up closer and closer floating towards what seemed to be the end of the earth, the center finally becomes visible with little specks of color. At last, you understand what people mean when they say black is all the colors and all the colors are black. The moon glides along the rainbow road after passing the bright path the stars created. It slides down around the sky falling off the edge but somehow always staying afloat in space as it watches the orange earth burning below unchanged in the silence, pitying the poor fools who shunned the darkness in exchange for the streetlamps and the decorations that covered the plastic plants that lined their balconies trying to emulate the stars and the rainbow road. The moon would remain content so long as the people didn’t peek their way in and see the little specks of color. He didn’t really have a reason to worry though. The people would never look up because there were only the ones that didn’t care about the darkness and the ones who looked up at the sky in the night and squinted their eyes trying to find something. When they couldn’t, they resorted to giving up within five minutes and joined the others.

    So both the moon and the earth went on their separate journeys only considering the other for a moment whilst sharing the same space and the same darkness and the same rainbows.

           Even as the moon moved closer to the earth going down on its slide, the earth moved farther and farther away as the people shrunk inside themselves when they could finally see the craters that lined the moon. The distance reassured them of their place in the world. By shrinking away they felt that maybe they could hide themselves. They closed their eyes trying to completely vanish away into the air. They wholeheartedly expected for everyone else to do the same. But nobody else-the moon, the stars, the sky- closed their eyes or maybe they didn’t even have eyes to close. It doesn’t matter because the people wouldn’t know.  

                                  ******

    When you close your eyes your world goes black but everyone else’s world stays illuminated by the stars in the sky. You force yourself to see the little green and red dots which interchangeably come in and out of the focus of your second sky. They pop in and out like dazzling lightning bugs whose colors are muted by a thin jar that covers them whole- in enough of a way that they are imprisoned but not so much so that they realize or feel it. The perfect amount. You smile as the green and red lightning bugs light up the sky in exactly the way that you want them to look. Sometimes they’ll come in the shape of the constellations and sometimes the bugs form familiar faces that slowly morph into hurricanes and tornadoes and rainstorms. You look at them and a fire begins to burn up inside of you, hollowing out your insides. But somehow that was better than what was there before. The air that now sits as soot in your lungs scrapes away at your stomach and then your lungs as it slowly chips away at the casing surrounding your heart. The remnants of the fire glow orange at the back of your throat as they begin to die out. It was the most dangerous part of the fire- the soot was its heart. And its heart, which had been locked up for a long time, was finally free and being in this state decided to let go of everything in its final breaths until nothing remained. The heart was free but the ashes that it left behind scatter through the insides of your body until everything inside is black. You try to cough it away and every time black smoke erupts into the air, you think that you’re going to be successful but the ashes still line your body. With each inhale, the smoke whirls around inside and creates a black wave that pierces your soul with poison until you can no longer take it and open your eyes before death visits you.

    The real sky looks the same as it did before. The moon looks the same as it did before. The stars look the same as they did before. You look up for a little trying to find something to hold on to, a little place to look for something besides just the sky and just the stars. But it doesn’t exist so you close your eyes again risking seeing what was there before in the hopes of finding something better.

    Meanwhile, in the sky, the stars continue to jump making their way around the twists and bends in the sky, creating a path of light for the moon and his friends. The moon tips his hat at them and waves his hand slightly to give the stars an indefinite goodbye as he goes down the rainbow knowing that he will be back in a few seconds.

As he makes his way to the edge of the rainbow, the moon looks down at you and your half open eyes. He shakes his head and makes his way back to the stars. He looks back down one more time and bows his head with a sympathetic frown now fully aware of the future you’re subjecting yourself to. There seemed to be hope before when you opened your eyes the first time but now you knew and the moon knew and the whole sky knew that you were too far gone. Addicted to an idea instead of the reality. Subjecting yourself to pain for a fantasy. Adding more poison to your body.

But you don’t care. You close your eyes, smiling, and go back to your dream land.

Goodnight.