The Poetry of the Stars and the People They Made

“You know, I don’t think stars and people are all that different.”

Her voice broke gently through the ambient noise of the night around us, and I tore my eyes from the stars, propping myself up on one elbow to look at her. The blanket gave slightly under the sharp angles of my arm, pressing the dirt below into my skin, but it didn’t bother me. “What?”

She didn’t look at me when I moved, keeping her eyes trained on the stars above us. “People like to talk about them like they’re these ethereal, perfect things, so far from human understanding. But I don’t really think we’re very different.”

“How so?” I watched her face carefully as she pondered her answer, lit so dimly by the silvery glow of the moon that I could barely make out her freckles. She was always so careful with her words, taking the time to make sure they came out with exactly the meaning and emotion she wanted them to have. It was one of the many things I admired about her. So I waited, patient, content just to look at her face in the meantime.

Eventually, she hummed, low and short. “Did you know that stars fight their own collapse?”

I shook my head. She wasn’t looking at me, but she seemed to know my answer. “As they near the end, the core gets hotter and hotter, and if it gets hot enough, it can perform nuclear fusion with elements it couldn’t perform it with before. So, in simple terms, it creates emergency fuel for itself.”

“Clever.” I remarked. She shrugged.

“Sure. But eventually, it runs out of that fuel, too. So it does it again. And again, and again, each cycle shorter than the last, until it can’t burn hot enough to move to the next stage–or the core is iron–and it can’t fuse anymore.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. The meaning of her words was clear, and I let it settle over my mind, heavy and dense. “That’s...”

“Look.” She raised her left hand, the one closest at me, to point to the stars. “You see that? There, in Orion’s belt.”

I laid back down, following her finger to the star she was referencing, glaringly bright in comparison to the others.

“That’s one.” She continued. “That’s one of the stars that fought. Who knows how many stages it got through before it got there? Thousands and thousands of years, fighting and refueling itself in a desperate effort to keep burning. And in the end...” She paused, letting her hand drop back to the blanket. I took it in mine without hesitation, and she smiled, squeezing one, two, three times. She didn’t say anything more.

“...In the end?” I prompted, and she sighed, squeezing my hand again.

“And in the end, it collapsed anyway. Gravity won.”

“It fought the best it could.” My comfort felt useless, applied to something thousands of miles away that had probably been dead since long before I’d been born.

She laughed quietly. “Do you wanna know the worst part? When it stopped fighting, and became the thing we see now, it achieved the perfect balance of pressure and gravity that would have saved it in the first place.”

I let out a slow, even breath. “It was fighting so hard it was blind to what was on the other side of the fight.”

She nodded. “Exactly.”

I squeezed her hand, a steady reminder, and she squeezed back. “Inspiring.”

“Devastating.” She corrected. I shrugged.

“Why can’t it be both?”

She turned her head to face me, the skin between her brows creased. The moonlight danced in her irises, and all at once I understood why the stars would fight so hard to keep burning. I was blind to what the future held for me, for us, but with the light in her eyes and her hand in mine, I knew that I would fight until I burned out to keep her beside me.

I smiled at her. It felt like the only thing I could do. “It’s only devastating because we know how it ends. It’s inspiring because that fight gives them humanity. They fight for themselves, and for what they want to be.”

Her hand loosened in mine as her frown deepened. “I don’t think I could fight until it killed me without knowing what was on the other side.”

A lump was forming in my throat, a feeble attempt to lock my words away in my chest. “I would. I–I will.” My whole body felt alight, burning with unsaid words that fought to cross lines drawn in the sand. I stared into those moon-graced eyes. “I’m not afraid.”

Her gaze drifted away from mine, one corner of her mouth pulled up in a clenched smile.

She turned her face back to the stars and was quiet for a good, long time. When she did speak, it was so quiet that the night breeze threatened to carry it away before I could hear it. “I think the stars would be proud to know their dust created you.”

It didn’t feel like a compliment.

My palm grew cold in the night air as she pulled her hand from mine, laying it to rest on her own stomach. My fingers curled inward, and I turned my gaze back to the stars above us, ignoring the feeling of my chest tightening.

Somehow, my focus fell on the very same star that she had pointed out to me only a few minutes prior. It flickered steadily, searing its light into my eyes. I wondered how many times it had burned through all its fuel before it finally collapsed, and if it ever regretted pushing so hard.