Stars Words Sea

I saw a shooting star tonight. The light caught the edge of my dimming vision, the edge of my shooting thoughts. The sun had set an hour before, the clouds darkening from red to purple to black as I traced a path of incomplete half steps along the sandy shore. It fell so quickly, I wondered if it happened, if I happened to remember it wrong. But that is not possible. Memories are true no matter how much truth they contain. Just as journalism is the same as fiction, a day's happening and a dream are both real.

They say that Mercury is in Retrograde. I imagine a planet spinning backwards, pausing briefly to soak up the rays of the far off sun when in the neighborhood. I wonder if the stars falling through the universe towards me are affected by bouts of confusion, misunderstandings. If they are told not to start new projects (like burning up in the atmosphere of a far off planet) or not to even consider having "the talk" with their significant heavenly body other. But I guess the stars must be free of such constraints. They are to shine and hurl themselves without restrictions.

I've started the words already. They are flowing through the ether, through galaxies of procrastination, through the baffles of my editing brain. Onto a page or screen they go. Spoken to friends, stumbling on broken sentences, words tumbling past my lips without my knowing how they got there.

Mercury, retro all you want. It is time for stars and words and the sea (Always the sea...) where miscommunication doesn't matter because we are made up of carbon and don't make much sense anyway.