The Stars' Keeper

Record One

When I first picked up the job as sole guardian and keeper of the stars it never came across my mind that someone could end up so lonely. In polished glass jars, small containers untainted by fingerprints are the dead remains of those once bright shining specters - stardust, the leftover husks that sparkle on through their own afterlife will. There are rows upon rows of shelves of these corpses. I have not yet lost track of each jar, or star, for in each of these casings and lost ashes of the night is a dear friend. They are the only company that I have been given in this isolating responsibility of mine.

Gnarled and woven around as would the roots of a young cedar to its nursing tree, my hands grasped the neck of a skimpy broom. The tiled finish of marble was scraped by the soft hairs of the brush, hissing, Keeper, you're stealing my stardust! The sickly intermingled dirt upon the floor mounded into its own gray mountain. Avalanches tumbled and the mountain changed form with each beating and meeting with the broom's whiskers. It was dust that couldn't be spared from the coarse philosophy of never lasting.

Everything will go to the same place in a matter of time. In a matter of time I'll no longer hone the strength for the meticulous and consequential work I would have hoped to accomplish with my nearing end of days. It has come to pass, within my deepest regret, to find inside myself a weakness, a dying star of its own if I may describe, that I too must abide in these rules and let nature have me undone.

Down the dust falls into oblivion, through the cracks to open space. The void has chosen a nobleman's preferred shade of navy blue in this moment. It allows the living stars to dance like raptured lovers in an oceanic daze of supernova and dark light madness. Clouds of hazy fresh-cut emerald and deepened orchid purples create the shapes of faces, of friends I've never met. They beckon me to come out of the temple, step off the edge of the clean floors, to the unknown where they float apathetically.

Oh, Keeper, join us. The jungle green lips would kiss my ears. Look how easy it would be to leave your birdcage, you pitiful being.

It is a matter of pride and responsibility that I do not move from my home. I step away from the crack, the white framed archway, to the center where I can be alone.

But I am never alone. Where ever I turn is a new jar of stardust to be seen. Polish and sort, clean and keep cleaning till my palms are raw, walk amongst the aisles and mazes of ersatz canopy jars until my legs buckle and give out and the loss of my silver stave pangs in my heart's chest. I can no longer do such a job alone. Out among the many young wisps flittering about in the infinite expanse will be someone keen for a meaning in life such as this.

I must find a new Keeper.

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