If The World Were Exactly The Way We Wished It Would Be
By Kat Burdon
Sometimes, it seems that the broadest, brightest night sky is lit not with starlight, but with a lifetime of wishes, caught and crystallized for a brief eternity.
Speak aloud, stars, speak with star-dusted breath across a world where all that glitters is not gold, though I wish it were. I wish that men were fair and beasts were free; that words could deliver equality rather than guard the gates of privilege, and that curiosity could withstand cynicism.
I wish that imagination and wisdom and kindness would bloom indefinitely, or rather that cruelty would freeze and perish in wintry isolation. Upon whole galaxies I wish for explicable fiscal, judicial and political systems based on more than theoretical bravado. And I wish that comets’ tails would drip sparks of something a little like joy onto all human life, if only for a second.
Sometimes, such star-spun wishes inevitably burn out – seemingly extinguished – only to be lit anew under the pressing weight of our most fickle and faithful friend: Hope.
But sometimes it might seem that the stars are shining somewhere, elsewhere, nowhere – anywhere but on you. On such nights, know that I wish for the sun and the stars to sustain you, to keep you whole and together, and altogether whole. For you I wish love. And if love has to leave you, I wish that it leaves you trusting in what could have been, and to what will be.
What will be … I wish that you would hurry up, wherever and whoever you are; I wish that I didn’t need you, but I do.
Whilst what will be struggles against what was, regret burns Mars-bright. I wish I had just kissed you, and I wish you hadn’t kissed her. I wish I still knew who you are, because I miss and love still who you always were to me.
That being said, I wish you remain as gloriously, unapologetically yourself, forever. I wish we had gone and could go everywhere together; more than that, I wish that we find each other again, there at the end of it all.
If I were to spend a sky of wishes at once, I would spend them on you.
For my big little brother, I wish he recognises the genius he can bring to the world to relieve people of their accustomed sorrowful silence. And for my big little sister, I wish all the world and more.
I wish you a lifetime of stars and moonlight, sun downs and sun rises, adventures and apathetic Sundays. For you, I wish for music and silence, screaming clarity and silent confusion; above all, I wish you a long and uncertain story, plotted against a constellation of happy endings.