By Henri Whitehead
When I, a young adolescent,
would stare at the stars above,
I felt both simultaneously frightened and fascinated.
Because like many before,
I wanted to understand the rules
That spun the Earth round
And built roads from rubble.
I wanted to see the cardboard walls
That held together this game of life,
Tucked snug In between Venus and Mars,
in the back of Milky Way’s closet
Except that black void above,
Kept haunting me with an awful truth
That no matter which rule was followed,
I would never know life’s true objective
And thus I could never actually win the game
But thankfully, you beaconed this wayward traveler,
With ideas and passion too big even for infinite cosmos.
I charted a new path with constellations,
Written in the starry freckles of your skin,
And suddenly night’s dark oppressor
feels more like a gateway to new adventure
Now as I, a man of thirty one years,
Stares at the stars above.
I don’t look for the walls of our world but rather the door.
To that blank slate in the sky,
Where we are free to write our next chapter.
