I was ten years old.
It was summer,
the first weekend visiting my Dad
after my parent’s divorce.
After a strange day
in what used to be our family home,
he got a ladder out of the garage
as night settled into
South Dakota’s expansive skies.
My father smiled like Galileo
as he propped the ladder against
the suddenly enormous, brown sided house.
He asked me if I wanted to look at the stars.
Backs hugged against day warmed shingles,
we lay so still that
we could feel the twirl
of our world as it pirouettes around the sun.
With his silence,
with his stillness,
with his radiating reverence
I received my first astronomy lesson.
He told me that this is all there is.
As we turn our gaze
to the burning skies
we see the oldest parts of ourselves.
All those ancient lights,
our ancestral mirror.
And arching across all
of that encompassed by dark
was my father, the moon,
this luminous, planet sized rock
that quelled my restless gravity,
Rocking me awash in the tides of love.
Patient as a telescope.
He showed me that immeasurable space within myself.
“Dad, there’s so many of them.
They’re so far away from each other….
I hope they’re not lonely.”
He just flashed me that Galileo smile,
assuring me that
we may be galaxies apart,
tethered to the confines of
the constellations of our minds
but we still hold each other
in the depths of our chests.
Light and movement our shared lineage,
we are born anew in each breath.
Come warm yourself in
my living room heart.
Come walk the rowed gardens of my ribs.
Come feast with me in
the grand ball room of my lungs,
the hallowed halls of our throats
are the happy havens for each others names.
We live embraced by our houses made
of skin and stars and wonder.
We are always home.
Melanie Starseed is the creator of Be Free Mommy, a blog dedicated to inspiring and uplifting women.
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