We Are All Made Of Stars

We lay on your red carpet after we drank too much and by morning the fabric would surely hold the smell of cheap cigarettes, but you wouldn’t worry about that now, maybe later, now all you needed was to lay still with me and look through the window and wonder
 why?

And I said: what, why? Why do you need to know? What does it matter?

We’ve grown up being told we need a reason for everything, that there’s a meaning behind every single thing and if only you figure out what it is, you’ll succeed, you’ll have made it. Wake up, make your bed, get out, be nice, work hard, eat well, be nicer, work harder, read good books, say your prayers, go to sleep, have peaceful dreams. Repeat.

But it’s not for us, darling, it never was. I don’t believe in a higher meaning, nor do I need a purpose to live for. I believe in us, in life, in the magical reality of everything around us. Look at it, then look again, look harder because I can’t make you see until you want to. 
This is it. This is all there is to it, and it’s wonderful enough as it is. I don’t believe in god or praying. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. There’s no afterlife I’m hoping for, no deadline I’m dreading. I don’t need to know what we’re put on earth for – I don’t believe we were put on earth to begin with. We became and here we are.

Insignificant to the universe, we could easily not have been here and all would still be as it is. But we’re here now and for that we’re infinitely blessed. You get to feel the cherry blossoms in your hands. Swim in cold water while the sun rises and warms your shoulders. Make love and cry because you’re sad or cry because you’re happy and never have to explain, because the tears stain all the same. You get to grow and dance and drink and see the world in every place you travel to. See birthmarks on your skin develop into patterns that mirror constellations if only you’d look long enough. I’ve got Orion on my thigh and your back’s just one mark short of Cassiopeia.

If you take us all apart, you’d find we’re all made of stardust – as are the trees, the frogs, the grass as well as the dew on it – why would we be any more special? I’ve never seen a tree stop mid-sway to contemplate why it’s moving and if it’ll ever get any closer. It sways and sways and sways and pretends it makes the same wind blow that it is rocking to.

We hold remnants of long lost stars in our veins. That’s not an answer, but it’s still magnificent and nothing can ever be both pointless and magnificent.