Collectively we strolled outside where time had enveloped the sky in its indigo blanket. We may or may not have enjoyed a cigarette but my memory did not deem it an important detail. When my thoughts finally settled like sand after a turbulent wave and I tuned in to the political conversation the four of us (or rather the three of you) had been discussing, I listened a bit and proceeded to assemble a group of words for the topic at hand. I used less of my actual thoughts (which were mainly ten shades of indifference) and contributed to the opinions that I believed would most pleasantly resound in the ears of the three of you. The floating heads of the circle nodded feverishly in agreement and picked up where my falsities left off. Having fulfilled my social duties my mind drifted once more. Coincidentally my eyes wandered up to where the eyes of infinite species’ before and infinite species’ beyond have wandered and will wander. I gazed upon the broken fragments of stars in the night sky and like a Roschdalt ink blot test the tiny universe within my brain attempted to find a pattern or a familiar shape, but I knew not of any constellations and to be honest my eyes were a bit drunken by that time to create my own.

“The stars…” I said dreamily.

The conversation paused for only a brief millisecond but proceeded onward over my speed bump of a blurb. I was not fazed, as I am quite used to being bypassed and my ethereal thoughts consumed me once more. You stopped however, and paid attention to the words that had leaked from the folds of my brain.

“Hey, listen, she’s right, because when we’re gone these stars will still be here,” you said.

I brought my eyes back from the stratosphere and looked into your blue or gray or maybe even green, eyes and said

“We are ephemeral”

At the time I believed you were searching my eyes, maybe I am wrong.

“Fleeting” you said, as if it had an exclamation point at the end; as if you held in your mind your own rendition of a dictionary. It was endearing to say the least. I smiled and nodded pleasantly, hiding my emotions inside the breast pocket of my winter coat. This person listened; this person understood the clumsy words that tumbled from my lips.

That night I fell asleep next to you
but you did not fall asleep next to me
Upon reflection I fear that I may have composed my own fate and that the chance of that moment repeating itself is as fleeting as the human race itself,
Somewhere far away the stars laugh.