on this day.

wishing on dead stars.

ix. WISHING ON DEAD STARS.

at six, i had a fear of getting lost in space. my mother watched documentaries while she thought i was asleep, hearing about asteroids and the cosmos, black voids that would consume us all one day. this freight of mine grew overtime, scared to even look up at a night sky and see a shooting star for i thought maybe then, the world as we know it would burn like hiroshima. it wasn't until thirteen, this fear became belittled by me, an ant i could squish with the ball of my foot because i had found space within me. my heart was saturn, a band wrapped around it, yet it was so tight that i could feel blood fill my lungs. it was after midnights, before noons, that i could feel this heaviness drape me, finding it hard to breath. i began to write about this stardust that cascaded my cheeks, this void that had been presented in my stomach, how lost i felt in skin that should feel like home and a place my soul could be in peace. even though i lost one fear, another one was built. a concept of space behind bones that creaked from how worn out they were, a cloudy night under tired eyes, stars dying out under closed eyelids. i wanted to find the sun, my goal in life is still to grip on to this light that once scared me for shown too much and you could grow a deadly disease. gallons of sunscreen poured on my already pale skin, crying when my mother dragged me outside. burying myself alive in phantom pain, cursing the sky for drowning me in nothing less than loneliness and mockery for their stars are awake, alive, while mine rot inside.

i now can look up at the sky on nights as starry as this one and cry for what i want to be.

maybe i'm not scared of space,
maybe i'm just scared of feeling i belong.