I haven�t seen a shooting star in years. I was in college then, walking home late at night from dinner with a beautiful poetic friend. A friend who could find love in a nettle plant if she were so inclined. We were talking about love then, as we walked in the January-cold of Kentucky. And lust. That semester a particularly stunning adjunct professor was on campus. She spent her days teaching students how to find what they didn�t lose via free verse and personification. A light-brown-sugar-spinner-of-words, she stole into my friend�s mind where she dreamt of climbing the stunning adjunct professor�s waist-length dreads to her heart. I�m not sure what my beautiful poetic friend wished for on that shooting (falling) star, but she spent the next three months stroking a nettle plant that would sting her in the end.
I wished (of course) for love.
Last night, I saw another shooting star. Slow, surreal, white against the plum-black sky. I blinked twice before I realized what it was, and then I exclaimed to my lover sitting next to me, �Look, a shooting star!� �Make a wish,� she replied. And together, my hand on her lap, her hand on my hand, we made a wish. I closed my eyes, moving my lips silently to the words I was thinking, and in that moment magic got the best of me.
Our new life together started with a kiss, her face in my hands, our skin illuminated by the streetlight outside my kitchen window, my back to the doorframe, her eyes intent on mine.
A shooting star and a pair of wishes.
Why do you do that? Look down when I tell you you�re beautiful?