i used to think finding someone was the hard part. you taught me how the falling barometer warns of the storm, how the body aches before the sky breaks. perhaps some things are felt long before they are lost. and all that time, autumn was passing us by.

so my wandering star, this one’s for you.

if i had asked you to share your burden with me,
would it have made a difference?

were you waiting for someone to notice you were drowning,
perhaps you were determined to disappear beneath the water alone?

if i had asked for less, would you have stayed longer?

if i had never told you i was hurting,
would you have noticed me leaving?

and i saw you,

under the applause of strangers,
under the hours between our goodnights,
under the stars you carried in your name,
and under your humour, i recognized a hurt
i knew all too well in myself.

i paid attention.
i hope you know i did.

my wandering star,

who were you performing for?

did you see me waiting in the wings,
believing i could reach you

was it the final curtain call
when i said goodbye out of spite?

i know you had your long days,
dirt beneath your fingernails,
the sun on your shoulders,
hands and body aching.

rain and heavy mud,
old things pulled from the earth,
pieces of history waiting to be found.

i had my long nights,
sleepless and lonely,
ink on my hands,
books gathering beside my bed,
rain against the window,

chocolate wrappers, and a cup gone cold

but now you’ve rearranged the stars above me,
the ground beneath my feet.
now i look up
and nothing is where i remember it.

the stars have started to resemble you.
constellations could have been named after you.

did you ever want to be known
as much as you wanted to be seen?

did you ever want to be found,
or had you spent so long keeping everyone out
you forgot how to let me in?

i kept reaching for you,

you liked the way i looked.
i just wish you’d wanted to know me, too.

it’s an old hurt, my wandering star.
being pretty enough to be wanted
and never quite enough to be known.

i kept making room until roots grew through me,
until thorns took hold
where you’d planted butterflies.

when did the ground give way, my wandering star?

i could count on your goodnights, the hour, the ritual, the stars.

even the earth knows when a fault line shifts. i felt it in your silence, in the pit of my stomach..

i left hurt and spiteful. your golden light against my rain-darkened skies, your warmth in the last amber days of autumn. and all the careful absence, the questions still collecting dust between us. when did the rain turn to hail, and how did we let the weather make strangers of us?

and after all the grace i gave your silence,
was there none you could spare for mine?

the longing took root in my body,
wound itself around my ribs,
caged my throat after my last words.

this grief, insurmounttable.

my wandering star.

and i wish i could shout all the anger out of me.

days spent longing for what we had, mistaking routine for fate, bearing the burn of waiting and calling it yearning.

what a disappointment it all turned out to be.

and perhaps the cruelest thing about fate
is how little it promises.

and the gods may call it fleeting,
but they know nothing of the depths
buried in this soul,
or all the miles
this heart would cross for another.

you were different.
this was different.

i kept telling you that you owed me nothing,
making myself smaller beneath your sky, until i forgot that i was owed a proper parting truth, if timing and circumstance were all you had to leave me with.

and still, i found myself on my knees,
gathering scraps of starlight,
begging the gods for a reason.

sadly, even orion, mighty among men, was powerless against fate

your absence became an old, familiar ache.

i have always given my all,
an idealist to a fault,
believing in what things could be
until i’m the one left grieving
what never came to be.

i think i’m cursed, my wandering star,

for the more i reach for people, the further they drift, my intentions are pure, yet there must be something rotten in my midas touch, some poison in my soul that withers everything in its path. i think i was born beneath a wicked moon, my soul forever at odds with the world.

when will i learn
to build walls around my heart,
to stop leaving the door open
for dreams and possibilities?

but i’ve never known how
to make a fortress of myself.
i was never meant to be that way.

and so i did what i’ve always done.

i let the vines climb,
gave your silence somewhere to take root.
i scattered goodnights like wildflowers along your path,
left questions blooming beneath your feet.
i promised myself to wait through your hard days,
watered what little grew,
and kept the garden free of weeds.

i mapped the stars between us,
tracing constellations around the distance,
praying on my knees
that the heavens might bring our orbits
close enough to touch.

but when the ending came,
there was so much hurt
and so little grace left in me.

perhaps you deserved a gentler goodbye.
perhaps you deserved all the fury
that circumstances have rained down upon us.

and perhaps that is what hurts most:
that i cannot make myself regret you
just because your silence lingers

i am glad i left nothing unsaid
glad i let you see the parts of me
i could have hidden behind my pride.
after everything that came before you,
i am glad my heart still knows how to open.

i could have let the fear of rejection
make my choices for me.
i could have swallowed every word,
pretended you had meant less,
left you wondering whether any of it was real.

but i didn’t.

i let myself care.
i let you know.
i gave this the honesty and tenderness it deserved,
and i will not be ashamed of that.

this was the last of what i had to give,
the last time i could reach across the distance
and hope you might reach back.
i have spent nights searching my tarots cards
for answers they were never going to give me.

still, when i think of you,
i want to keep the good.

the long conversations.
the little things we found in common.
the mind i wanted to know better,
the heart i glimpsed beneath the humour,
the person i was so genuinely glad to have met.

i don’t know what you will remember of me.
i only hope that, somewhere among the things
the universe has asked you to bear
you remember that someone saw you
and thought you worth knowing.

“we need, in love, to practice only this:
letting each other go.”
— rainer maria rilke

so before love, before loss, before the what-ifs, i’m letting you go, my wandering star. you have histories to uncover and old worlds to bring back to life. i have books to write and woods left to wander. and if the stars ever bring us back to each other, you’ll know where to find me.

when the stars align,

perhaps, by then,
we’ll be brave enough to follow where they lead,
to weather what once frightened us,
to find our way back

perhaps we’ll have learned
that some things are worth weathering the storm for,
and some people are worth finding our way back to.

before then,
this is goodnight,

my wandering star,

my star-crossed stranger,
my fleeting wonder,
my aching wish beneath a darkening sky.

i hope you know how much i appreciated you.
i hope the world is kind to you.
i hope you accomplish everything
you have ever dared to dream of.

and more than anything,
i know love will find its way to you so easily.

if not mine, then another, 

it will arrive without fear,
without the weight of old wounds,
without making you wonder
whether you are worthy of being stayed for.

i hope someone sees the whole of you
and chooses to know you,
and that one day you let them.

and i hope you know
that even after all this,
i cannot bring myself to wish you less.

i used to think finding someone was the hard part, but it’s the letting go,

so all my love, my wandering star.

my star-crossed stranger,
my fleeting wonder,
my aching wish beneath a darkening sky.

for the millionth time,
and for the last time here:

i have always been,
and always will be,
rooting for you.

goodnight
goodnight.