He’s a star, and you’re his satellite. He’s lost, somewhere out in the vastness of the universe, and you’re sending signals to find him, never knowing if they’ll reach him. They are prayers and they are desperate.
Your hands bleed from wringing them, and from clawing at the Earth to demand he comes back to the home he never knew he had. The one with you. The one where you erase the last few chapters, and when he tells you he loves you, you say it back. When they wrote your story, you always knew it would be a tragedy, but you’d hoped they’d spare him the same.
You remember huskin’ corn down in Indiana. Dad was gone a lot that year. Job didn’t pay for shit, but helped you get by when the money was tight. And money was always tight.
You spent fifty cents tryin’ to win your pops a watch out of one of those claw machines. You don’t say ‘I love you’ in families like yours. Practical gifts are permitted. A bottle of beer, a candy bar from the grocery store, given’ your kid brother the last bowl of Lucky Charms.
You didn’t win the watch. You won a medallion instead with an angel on it. Said ‘angels are watching over you’, same thing your mom used to say before she died. You tossed the coin in the river. Used it to make a wish. The angel hears you, but it’s not your time yet. The world isn’t ready for you.
