022 - skygazer
i remember a moment shared, on the balcony of a university building, late into the evening.
”i hate how you can’t see the stars in the city. it makes me feel so trapped”
”at least the sky is pretty, if you look”
she was right. we lingered on that moment a little too long before we went back inside. i wonder if she remembers it.
it’s 2022 and my friends and i have grown used to the feeling of delinquent freedom. we’re at an abandoned quarry, just north of the city. it’s quite late at night, or perhaps quite early in the morning, and we’ve just finished the climb down, over the ridge into the bowl of the quarry. its huge stone faces rising up around us, blocking any distant signs of the city. the night is cloudless and moonless, yet the glow from the sky is still bright enough to light our paths.
i hate how when you’re near the city, it never gets truly dark. when was the last time you were in true darkness?
i don’t have an answer. i’ve never really felt that frustration before, as much as it burns in me now
i didn’t exactly grow up in the country, but for the entire span of my life, my parents lived just on the outskirts - the edges of suburbia that had, for the moment, still escaped.
but despite this distance, it never really got dark there. even in the most moonless of nights the sky still radiated a strong enough glow to get by.
i don’t recall the first time i became aware that i couldn’t see the stars in the city, but the feeling is burned into me, the wonderful mixture of horror and awe and raw claustrophobia. that night, after i caught the midnight bus home, i got off as early as i reasonably could, just to stare at the stars on my elongated walk home.
and then i moved into the city, and i spent three years learning the new colour of the night sky. the stars out of the city are almost scary, almost too empty. almost.
the other night, as chance would have it, i happened to back on that balcony for the first time in a couple years. i didn’t really look, but i think the sky was too cloudy for me to see anything.