Shooting Star

I can’t decide if a shooting star is a friend or a foe. The way it appears and disappears within the same moment makes me question its allegiance. It’s there long enough to cause you to marvel — and that marveling is so unexpected that the suddenness of it has you in a childlike state, somehow giddy and open to wonder and possibilities and magic all over again — but then it leaves so quickly that you soon ask yourself if you really did see it. Because now there is no trace of it, and your friends who turned too late to see what you were screaming at have become your skeptics, and their arguments for its non-existence (including that it’s not really a shooting star) are so persuasive that you begin to side with them, and you would do so completely if it weren't for that great impression of beauty your soul is holding onto, like a child clinging to her father’s leg in the middle of a crowd, understanding that letting go would certainly mean becoming lost. And so the demand to hold onto something you can’t fully explain or point to any longer picks a fight with reason, and each side loudly barks, “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.” So you strain your neck and become angry at the night sky for teasing you so badly while simultaneously wishing it will be kind once more and show you, if even for just one moment, what you hope really exists.