Growing Up Means Giving Up What Once Made You Believe

I have a debate tomorrow on whether fire was the most important symbol in Lord of the Flies. My friend and I are on the con side, which is just as well because I do not believe fire is the best one. Piggy's glasses are! haha! We are definitely going to pummel the opposing side with our awesomeness and high intellect. I'm writing my opening-speech right now...it has to be four minutes long but I don't think it should be. I think it should be as long as necessary to convey my point, and then I should be able to end it and get FULL POINTS!!! yeeeeah!

so, because of that, and my inherent laziness, I will leave you with another proestry piece I wrote today [when I wasn't working on my speech.] Background: When I was younger I loved star-gazing, but I have always been terrified of space (go figure...) The thought of being stuck up there in a space-craft or ejected into nothingness continues to haunt me forever, but I still love the stars and, above all, the moon. [Though not as much as I used to] It's a piece about that, and also, the fact that growing up SUCKS and I wish I didn't have to become so sensible.

The Great Beyond

The moon overtook me, darlings.


I used to pray on stars. I used to twirl beneath clouds, palms up, tap-dancing to the cadence of raindrops on rooftops, and only look up. I used to circle bonfires, arms waving about my head, my hair catching the firelight and turning auburn, singing with my eyes full of flame. My heart used to be alive.

They always told me the moon was magnificent, treacherous like the bodies it controlled, but endlessly forgiving. Luna, beautiful Luna, show me the man on the moon. All I ever see are craters and icecaps and flags unmoving in the atmosphere.

I was once a creature in the deep, made of lithe limbs and coiled-chrome muscles. I jack-in-the-boxed from chests, leapt from closets, and somersaulted off couches, bruising but never breaking. I growled at dogs and slunk through shadows. I was rabid and ferocious, but I was also scared. I was a child creeping with baited breath over floorboards that creaked, lying uneasy in the gloom as the house personified and the walls growled back. I howled at the moon to see if martians answered, and counted shooting stars like candy. I digested the heavens, eyes full of galaxies, even though my heart told my head to be afraid; that only emptiness and asphyxiation waited in the great beyond.

My parents taught me to walk and write and string laces through shoes, but I, alone, learned how to gaze at stars. As a child I was full of wishes; I blew on dandelions and plucked clover and lit candles for the dead, but, much as I feared the darkness, nothing promised more than those mysterious, burning celestial bodies. I engraved the paths of comets in my irises, traced constellations on my kneecaps, and discovered nebulas in Rorschach. I counted the twinkles of the stars and chased the moon - living my life in phases; waxing and waning, and eventually turning invisible to most of the world.

I found my life-line in Orion's belt, and discovered the curve of my back-bone in his starlit bow.

I was wide-eyed and wonderful, but one day, I simply stopped looking up.

I stopped wondering why raindrops always fell and never rose, and why salt on wood turned the flames green. I stopped chasing the ends of rainbows, and stopped wishing on candle-smoke. One day, I howled at the moon, and she did not respond. I waved but she did not smile back. Instead, she brought the rain and hail and waves crashing down on me, and I no longer asked for the man on the moon. All I ever saw was a wolf staring down at me; a magnificent shape carved from rock and asteroids and icecaps. I began to see the stars as balls of gas instead of smiling, burning beings, and the clouds' silver lining turned to smog.


I used to pray on stars. I used to brave the darkness for a glimpse of the moon, and taste the treacherous waves, searching for messages of her love and salty-sweet promises. I used to dance and sing and wish [wish with a conviction that proved I believed, completely.] My heart used to be alive. But one day the moon overtook me, and I diminished.


I used to pray on stars as if they could truly, truly hear me. It is only now, surrounded by dew-grass angels, mud sucking at my knees, and fingers buried in the turf, that I realize.

The stars I pray on have been dead for a thousand years. They could no more smile down on me nor dance, than live and be loved.