Homesick for the Stars

When I stumble into landscapes like these, I can’t help but laugh at the audacity of man — thinking we can tame this beastly beauty of nature and dare to call it “mine.”

Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror.

So I do. I stand still in trembling reverence at the sight in front of me, holding the quiet ache of knowing that if I blink, this exact combination of light and color will be gone forever.

As I stare at the steps of clouds ahead of me, my lips refuse to declare my feelings. The only evidence of what’s occurring is a momentary catch in the throat — so vivid you could see it even if you were blind.

My homesickness for the stars is getting so pronounced that I feel I’ve climbed close to heaven, making me delusional that all I need is a few more steps to reach that orange sliver of peel inviting me into it.

But isn’t that what homesickness is — not for a place on the map, but for a version of what all this could be if only we could get our way with life?

Tonight I was feeling sad, I ran outside to stare at this beauty, and I felt glorious instantly. I’m sure you were doing the same somewhere reaching for the impossible sky.

This breathtaking storm is so silent, just like the dark things that live within all of us. Some secret storms in the end will bring a luminous sunset.

I don’t want to resolve the feelings I have. The best proof I was born free is the air on my face, on a road I’ve never walked before. This road is pulling me forward, and upward towards the sky. Both feel like home, yet neither truly is.

As the golden hour sky gets swallowed into the borrowed moonlight, I try to find my way home.

But I’m beautifully, hopelessly lost.

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