I Told The Stars About You

Last Night's Dream

Andrew was walking up the hill with a blanket in hand and a bottle of whatever liquor he found inside the liquor fridge from his mom's house. Once he placed the soft blanket over the grass, he sat down and opened the bottle of alcohol with the bottle opener, then he took a long chug to the bottle. By the taste, and the tag pasted on the glass bottle, it was red wine that he was drinking. He didn't exactly love red wine but for right now he was just fine with it.

He realized that after coming to this exact spot to let himself free, it was becoming a habit. He came here every time he had something lingering in his mind, something that he couldn't get out even with therapy. He felt this to be so much more of a safe place now than when Dalton was alive, he felt a deeper connection to the night sky, the moon, and the stars.

"So... yesterday I came back to campus, it was sort of weird...to be honest. Everyone was looking at me with pity, I mean it was great to go back but... I felt weird, like the center of attention, I felt the stares and the sorry, the pity was way too much; it was as if it was choking me dead." He took another sip of the wine bottle.

"I was walking through the halls and then there was this altar... at the notice board..." he took another sip, but this one was a longer one, as if he was chugging down water.

"I thought it would've been an altar for you, Dalton." He took a deep breath to in a way control his anger. "...But it was for him... They made an altar for your murderer Dalton!"

"They made Luke a fucking altar! But the weirdest thing is... that he killed himself... I stood there in front of the altar in a fucking rage! And I asked others what had happened to him, they told me he commited suicide."

He was tearing up through his words, the alcohol was not even saving his sorrow, "I yelled at him to kill himself...and he did... so now not only did I lose you Dalton... but I'm also the guilty one for Luke's death."

He stayed quiet for a long time, the cold air was no stranger to him now, he took sips of the bottle every now and then. He was pondering every event that had gone down this week, of every interaction he had with the students, with the teachers, with anyone that knew that he was the partner of the man that was killed on campus.

"The rage inside me was so, so much, I was so confused as to why they would make him an altar, out of everyone, why him?"

"But then someone tapped my shoulder, it was someone I recognized from my class. He said for me to go look outside, where the garden was..." he rubbed his hands together to win some warmth, then he took yet another sip, "...so I went... and when I did, I... I felt my stomach tumble and I felt my heart squeeze."

"...Dalton... my love.... There was an altar there, for you..."

"It was in the exact place where you laid, there was a trail of flowers around the form of your body, and there were candles, and there were pictures, and poems, Dalton, there were so many flowers... There were no students walking around there. That hallway was just for you."

He took another sip. "It was sort of nostalgic to see the altar, my mind flew back to when I visited Mexico in November, and there were so many altars for the loved ones of people; they were surrounded with color, it was very...it was so familiar...like the people who did the altar, they knew the person with such familiarity, and love... I felt like that when I saw your altar."

"Dalton, I just know that you would've loved seeing it, you would maybe even cried!"

His mind lingers, "It was sure as hell that I did cry, just a little."

After saying yet another anecdote of his week, he went quiet, but he didn't stop thinking about what would be a good story to tell the stars at the moment. He took several sips, from his sitting position over the blanket, he laid back. He closed his eyes for a moment, to take in the fresh air, then his eyes opened.

Andrew moved his head to the side, and there it was, a batch of blue violets. He stared at it for a while, trying to remember from all the books he read about flower meanings, what the blue violet meant. His search for the meaning came to an incomplete resolution, to which he had to grab his phone and search for the meaning.

As he looked through pages and pages of meanings in an article of floriography, he found the only answer he needed. "Blue Violet. Watchfulness, Faithfulness, I'll Always Be There."

"I'll always be there, watchfulness..." he repeated to himself, then another anecdote from his week came to mind.

"So last night I dreamed of you. I can't quite the whole dream...but you were there..."

He took a sip of the wine bottle, it was almost empty now. "I was standing in this same field, there was so many flowers all around me, of all colors too... and the wind was calm, it was night, and then...I felt you... your presence, I felt it, and when I wanted to find you and look at you; I couldn't..."

"I knew it was you but I couldn't see you, I could just feel your presence, your stare."

"Then when I woke up, I wrote down the pieces I remembered, and when I did... My mind came to the conclusion that I missed you so much...that my brain made me see you... I missed you so much I dreamed of you, Dalton."