Once We Were Starlight

The crazy rush spun my head and halted my breath and I craned my neck, my gaze reaching for the still and gentle sky. But all I could see were the tops of buildings, piercing the clouds and obscuring the peace I’d been seeking.

Despite the congestion and the confusing hustle, there were wonders to be found in the place I now called home, one of which was my school library. Sometimes, when I entered, I would stand in the atrium, gazing upward and marveling at the incredible reach of the twelve balconies, each covered with pixelated gold glass. I’d heard someone whisper to another that the gilded plates had been added to address the numerous suicides that had happened there and the quietly-said words made me think of Ahmad. A dizzying cascade of pain had shaken me and I’d hurried to the stairs, running upward until the memory was crushed beneath the giant inhales of oxygen I pulled into my winded body. And then I’d chosen a pile of books at random, immersing myself in information until I could finally breathe freely again. How could a place so huge contain nothing but stories and knowledge? But that’s what it did. It was its whole purpose and nothing more. And from what I’d heard, there were many others like it on the campus and in the city, even scattered throughout the world. It boggled my brain and made my guts clench with desperation to realize how much there was to know, how little time we had to learn it, and how much of my life had already been wasted in utter ignorance. Was that why? Was that why the visitors had laughed at me? Physically, I’d never been like the others, but had they known that I was uneducated? Naïve?

Stupid?

So yes, there was awe, but there was also grief. Grief at knowing the scope and breadth of the lies I’d been told, the information that had been kept from me on purpose so that I might find satisfaction in our small, narrow life based on greed and exploitation, sickness and sin. I stood in wonder before patios of diners eating in crowded restaurants, remembering the joy I’d once found in a perfectly ripe apricot plucked from a tree because I had no way to fathom that there might be anything more.

I both hated that girl and longed to be her again.

Braxton and Claire took me to the New York Aquarium, which was a wonder to behold. I knew the great blue whale that Doren had once told me about was too large to fit in a place like this, but it still reminded me of him anyway and my heart squeezed tightly at the memory of his voice. I watched colorful fish swimming in tanks and I wondered if they knew how confined their world was and how trapped they really were. I told Claire I needed to use the restroom and walked quickly down the hall where I stood in a darkened corner, confused by the tears tracking down my cheeks.

There was sadness, some unexpected, and some not, but there was happiness too. My greatest joy was found in school. I loved the textbooks with page after page of insight I’d never considered before. History, science, geography, and more math than I’d ever dreamed existed. I loved the paper and the pens, and the teachers who stood before the large board at the front of the room and taught us the specific subjects they were passionate about.

But I loved English most of all. It probably took me three times as long to read the books as the other students, but I didn’t mind. I hung on every word. Within the pages was a safe place away from the confusion of this overwhelming place I’d found myself in, the one I still struggled to understand in ways both big and small.

And books gave me the confidence to know I was using the correct words in the right ways, applying them as they were meant to be applied so I didn’t sound like the outsider I was.

I loved the stories and phrases, and the way writers and poets strung sentences together so my heart ached and my breath caught and I was compelled to go back and read the passage again and again, re-experiencing its magic. I loved becoming immersed in tales that swept me away to other lands, and had me falling in love with valiant heroes, and brave heroines who, when I closed the book and set it aside, I missed as if they were my own flesh and blood. I learned that while the rules of math were strict and finite, the rules for writing, once learned, could be broken with style and flair. How wonderful to know a thing so well, you understood its every bendable nuance and could shape it like pliable clay into something brand new that was uniquely your own.