Stepping forward bravely, with Fear my travel companion.
We step, hand-in-shadow, into the colors of the future.
There’s an orange here, inexplicably, but I laugh in delight and quickly pick it up to show my friend. “Look,” I say, “have you ever seen such a wonder as this? An orange in a suitcase—doesn’t it make you want to sing?”
My partner says nothing, and averts its gaze.
Flickering, I put the orange in my pocket, and we continue forward in silence.
The colors are vibrant, beautiful, breathtaking. I want to exclaim and celebrate this beauty, but the orange weighs heavy in my pocket, and I remain silent.
The world shifts, and we are now walking along a field of sunflowers. The highest yellow, I feel like I will disappear. The sun-soaked splendor of it makes me whirl, unthinking, to my friend, and I declare, “There has never been a sight as wondrous as this!”
At this, I realize my friend is not looking. Its dark lashes hood the shining eyes I have seen before, and I frown for the view it is missing. Nevertheless, I pluck one of the sun’s flowers and thread it into my lapel.
We continue on, Fear and I, the silence stretching beyond the sunflower horizon. When we next halt, it is in a place of close darkness. I can barely see my friend, though I feel its presence, sure on this…
and there, above and nearing, is a star. Appearing in the dark out of nowhere, as if this star were born millenia in the past, knowing by some divinity that its light would reach us this precise moment, long after its own ending.
I grip the shadow tighter, and without looking, I whisper, “This, my friend, is surely something worth your witness.”
My hand feels a slight pressure, and my gasp seems to echo all around us. I chance a look down, and there is a trembling I have never known before in my reticent friend. I let my gaze drift upward to meet those shining eyes…but they do not meet mine. Instead, they pierce my side, like the Centurion’s spear, and to mollify that gaze, I take the orange from my pocket. I release the hand of my friend, and draw the sunflower from my lapel. These I lay before us, and with both hands now open, I pluck the star from its ancient firmament and lay it before us, as well. By that light, I see my friend anew, and our eyes finally meet.
Fear, it turns out, has eyes of gold, when you really look by the light of your very own star.
We work, with our four hands, diligently crafting these souvenirs of our journey together into something full of flavor, full of color, full of light. Into this opus, we breathe the darkness we don’t see, the fruit we’ve never tasted, and the fields we forgot to frolic. I laugh as I work, and I think my companion laughs, too, in its own way. And when we pause (for is light ever really “finished”?), we sit together and see, for the first time, the multitude of stars that’s been waiting for us all along.
Originally published here on October 27, 2021. Social sharing image by Nastaran Taghipour on Unsplash.