the night sky

she sleeps with books tucked around her. and i hear her telling stories to herself after we lay her down for the night, singing and talking to the stars on her ceiling. (her "stars from nova and iku" as she calls them. because they gave her the sky.) a solid hour sometimes. i try to listen and hear where her heart takes her. where her dreams start. and i sneak in every night before i lay down to turn off her stars. because i don't want them to catch fire. sometimes burning out is not better than fading away. it's all about context, don't you think?

do you ever sit sometimes in that little spot between everything you have and everything you want? where you think you would be so happy 'if only...' and you fill in the blanks with so many things and then the things change and you realize you might never be happy at all, once you've been honest with yourself. and then the earth shakes and the waters move and you think 'if only...'

i wonder sometimes about living on one side of a parallel universe. and i wonder if the forks in the road where i stood and turned around would have merely led to the same couch but in a different living room or if perhaps i would have joined the peace corps or started an organic farm had i followed the footprints of anyone else. i wonder about the way time passes and how much control i really have over where i end up. i think about the fact that perhaps i am not an old soul, after all. that i am still new because i always seem to be a few steps behind, trying on the footprints of others and realizing a half a beat too late that they don't fit just right. as i get older, i start to fully understand who exactly i am but then i realize i am closer and closer to becoming merely the person i used to want to be because so much time has passed that certain windows have been covered, replaced with walls.