This story isn’t about me.  Not really.  It’s about you.  Remember that.    

You were an only child.  A dreamer.  You read books, wrote strange stories, studied the star-spackled night sky and speculated about what dwelled in the mysterious cold cosmos, that vast dark canvas that threatened to swallow everything in its path.  And somehow the thought that there was something else out there—something cosmic, alien and unyielding—comforted you.  And it hungered like you hungered.  So you looked up, always up.

Something was missing, though, some integral part of your being.  You weren’t truly whole.  So you searched.  And you found her, the girl, in an empty school yard, humming a gay tune, shiny black-patent shoes tip-tapping a crazy hopscotch beat, blonde pig-tails bouncing.  And you thought, She’s the one!  Sweet.  Innocent.  Full of life.

But she wasn’t the one.  Even though you tried to be quiet, tried not to startle her, she saw you and ran off.  And all you really wanted was to watch her play, to momentarily live vicariously through this beautiful creature.  It would have been enough.

***

Once upon a time you were happy.  There was a spring to your step, a smile on your face.  Life was a vast green meadow of butterflies and sunshine.  Life was an overwrought cliché.  You grew, aged, and became an adolescent.  You met people, made friends, forged relationships, dated; found a good job with decent pay and courteous colleagues; met a beautiful girl, got engaged, then married.  Together, you bought a home.

Children—that’s where it started to go wrong.  You wanted children but she didn’t.  You wanted to revel again in that sense of childhood wonder.

It was more than that, though. It was life.  It wore on you, ground you down.  The simple everyday drudgery chipped away at your exterior, ate at your soul, leaving a rough surface and an empty shell.  You frayed and came apart like a bird’s nest knocked from a tree in a violent spring storm.

You needed something.  Your wife didn’t want children, but you decided that you would have one.  And this time it was a young boy—sweetandinnocentandfulloflife—lured from the penny arcade with promises of sweets.

This could be the one, you thought, as you sat beside him on the park bench, losing your self in his big, bright eyes, sharing Cracker Jack, watching the stars come out, your heart thumping.

But he wasn’t the one.  He dashed off into the dark, whimpering, as you reached for him.  And all you wanted was to tousle his hair, maybe stroke his smooth cheek.  It would have been enough.

***

Your job, like most jobs, became mundane.  You dreaded going to work each day, buffeted along the grimy city streets between mobs of insular grey-suited people, their heads down, always down, even as you always looked up.  You wondered what ever drew you to this group of friends so unlike yourself.  And your wife, your once beautiful wife, grew distant, aloof and cold.  The sight of her made you shudder.

Every day grew grey.  You were suffocating.

So you threw it all away: your friends, your job, the house, your wife.

You started over, with nothing.  Alone.  It should have been easy, right?  After all, you started with nothing before and built a life.  This time you would do it right.  This time, instead of chipping away at you, life would roll over you, smooth the edges, and leave you bright and polished like stones in a riverbed.

Slowly, you began to forge a new life.  You moved to a new city, got a new job, rented a small cottage outside the city.  At night, with the hoot of owls and the singing night-wind as your only company, you sat out and watched the crow-dark sky, the stars winking brightly, suggestively, and it brought back the childhood wonder.  You thought of vast faery-green meadows, and near-dark woods hiding midnight goblins.  At night, in your too-small bed, you slept, dreamt, and were once again a child, stomping through dogwood pastures and primeval forests, unearthing Indian arrow heads and squirming salamanders; you slew dragons, rode on the backs of Pterodactyls, searched for buried pirate treasure and sailed silver spaceships, dreaming about the night sky and its shifting caliginous depths.

Try as you might, though, you couldn’t bring yourself to make new friends.  You really couldn’t stomach your co-workers and their insincere smiles, their knowing glances, their disingenuous conversation.  For a while you put up with it.  Then, once again, the thought of going into work filled you with trembling despair.  You often called in sick.

You tried, as well, to meet girls.  But they looked at you strangely, as if you were alien.  You tried to talk to them about life and love, marriage and children, the hungry stars.  They grimaced and turned away.

So you kept to yourself, sitting out on the back porch, suddenly old beyond your years, alone and friendless, eyes scanning the heavens, searching, feeling that cosmic pull and wondering where the bright-eyed childhood adventurer went.  You were trying very hard to start anew.  You desperately wanted to be happy.  You wanted companionship.  You wished you had someone you could call, someone you could talk to, a brother or sister, a daughter, a son, a lover.

And you found someone, another boy.  This time, you took no chances.  You noticed him idly peddling a blue bicycle on a dusty hard-scrabble country lane.  You drove up behind him, knocked him into the ditch, then scooped him into the trunk of the car.

You began to hope.  This might be the one.

At home, as a precaution, you bound him to the bed.  Tears pooled in his tiny black eyes and the sight of them, and his quivering lips, nearly broke your heart.  You leaned over, dried his eyes.  They were dark and brilliant and shifted like the night sky.  Your body trembled, filled with a growing sense of wonder and anticipation.  And you saw it reflected in his dark, starry eyes, that same child-like astonishment.  It was in him, too.  And you wanted it.  So you opened him up.

***

Frequently you walked in the countryside near your cottage.  You strolled through the dim woods, listening to the chirr of the forest creatures.  You followed the creek bed, watched the tiny brown fish darting in the sun-dappled water.  You wandered the wide clover fields, looking up at the sky, waiting, as if searching for something.  And you realized you’ve been searching for something else all your adolescent life.

Then one day you found me—the one!—someone exactly like you, in the forest by the creek, as if I’d been waiting for you; a gift from the heavens.  Sandy-haired, thin and athletic.  A quick and ready smile.  And we had so much in common; another nature lover who shared your sense of child-like wonder.  We became fast friends.  Lovers.

Smitten, you fell in love.  This time was different.  You could feel it deep inside you.  Something had changed.  You’d found that missing piece of yourself, that missing link you’d been searching for your entire life.  You were whole.  Together we were one.

Once again you were happy, exultant.  We would walk together in the green woods and picnic by the creek reading Whitman and Thoreau; sit out on the paint-flecked porch under the velvet, star-studded night sky and talk and daydream and listen to the ancient, wise wind; huddle like school kids in the tiny kitchen sharing coffee and conversation and secrets, the words between us like falling dust.  We would lay together in the too-small bed, touching and twining.

How could it be, you wondered?  How could you, after a lifetime of searching, chance upon this other being, so like you—exactly like you, as if I’d simply assimilated your hopes and fears and dreams as if it were the most natural thing in this world?

You wonder this and more as we embrace and I open up and show my true self, show you my need, my hunger; that unending black, churning tide that tugs at us both.  And you look up at the growing black mass, eyes widening in surprise and awe at the engulfing storm of stars and the sudden dark that takes you and truly makes us one.

We make plans, content in the knowledge that we will have several happy years together filled with the love of many children.

END