Written in June 2019, published with minor edits. Inspired by the song Mikrokosmos.

I had a dream yesterday, I was climbing up the stairs of a lighthouse. It was dark, but it wasn’t cold. I couldn’t tell at first if it was real, or just a delusion, but, still, I went all the way, up until that point where it was just the wind against my face. My eyes could see the open sea, reflecting the darkness of the star-studded night skies, waves crashing over and over the infiniteness of secrets. I turned my back on the moon, and the stars, and the lights of the lighthouse, to face my lifetime fear of the unknown, and to face you, there all along. I wish I had taken a photograph; a single frame of you, leaning over the railings, turning around to watch me, watching you and the sea. I know that night pictures can seldom capture the magic of the moment we seek to freeze, but your ghostly shape against a pitch-black scenario would be enough to tell this story.

We have always been so cheesy, waking up before the sunrise, staying up after midnight, to tell each other myths about the constellations. Before I met you, I used to reserve these moments for me, because, in real life, they are never as beautiful as in the movies. The first time I ever asked someone to come watch the sunset, I was bored by their boredness; but you asked me to count the colours of the clouds. I was confused, I could swear I would have told that myself, but you said it first. For a minute there, I thought you were just a fiction of me, outside my body. “Maybe this is the daydream”, I guessed, but maybe we just watched the same movies growing up. Life can be that funny, too, I just didn’t know it, back then.

I can’t remember every sunrise and sunset, but, everytime I look at you, it feels like I do. I suppose that’s the reason any simple picture could tell this story so well; you’ve always been there, whatever the situation, whether in the background, or taking over the whole frame. I know we don’t tell our feelings very often these days, because we’re old enough to remember all the stuff that’s been said before, but I still talk about you every day, in my mind. And, every time we come together, for a meal, or business, or just an unimportant conversation, I go back to the sunrises, and sunsets, because we’re still the same kids, but we’ve grown up a little and now we do overtime almost everyday, past 8 pm.

I daydreamed yesterday, but I didn’t realise it was just a fragment of my imagination until the night skies and the sea melted into the colours of walls, desks, and curtains. Remember how I could see the world in allegories? I still do, I just don’t talk about it anymore. I see so many realities coexisting at the same time, and sometimes I can’t even tell which one is real, and which one is just a picture in my head. Right now, I swear I can see through these brick walls, to watch the big dark sea from the top of the lighthouse, as if I could turn my back at any given time just to see how it lights the whole room, from an alternative dimension. 

Even though this town is too bright for us to see the stars, last night we agreed to watch the night skies. We met later than expected, in your own office, because it’s five floors closer to Heaven than mine. I had my bag, so that I could go straight home, but you would still have work to do, and we both know it isn’t fair, but we both do it, anyway. You pulled the curtains apart, and sat on the floor to wait—in this reality, there are no railings to see the sea, just big glass windows facing the streets. I could still take a picture, though, when you turned your head to face me, because this one tells the story, too; just a frame of your profile against those city lights, that shine much brighter than the distant stars, and piss you off enough to rant about it all night long. Remember when we used to daydream about flying in outer space, touching celestial bodies as if they were just hanging from the ceiling, a palpable reflection of Holy light? I could draw a picture of that in my head as well.

I know you’ve been too busy every day of every month of every past year since we grew up, so little did you know that I’d been watching the night skies every day on my own, since we got too old to stop to see the sunset. I’m sorry if I never called you to come, but I know that you hate how the next-door building blocks so much of our view. We lean closer to the glass, to catch a glimpse of the upper Heavens, but I spy something with my little eye. Have I told you that I still see the world in allegories? I just don’t talk about it anymore.

If you can, imagine with me that every light on across the city is like a twinkling star, like the street lights that look like constellations, when you watch the world from an airplane at night. Remember when we first stepped into each other’s worlds, the moment we crossed the point of no return? Everyday we worked hard to grow up decent, and dreaming, and I just knew you could shine so bright, even with my eyes closed. And we mean so much to each other, but there’s always a bigger world to realise, there’s always a much bigger picture that we can draw, if we zoom out just a little bit and get caught in the hundreds and thousands and millions of billions of small galaxies that we see everyday, even though we might never see them up close.

There are stars that shine bright behind every window that we see now. Sometimes, I daydream about flying in their outer space, touching their bright golden faces, seeing how they reflect Holy light, and they captivate me so deeply that I don’t even want to come down. So many windows I’ll never get to open, so many lighthouses I’ll never get to climb, but, still, I can’t help but wonder what colour their walls are painted, and how tall or short I’d look next to their railings. If they do overtime, or if they bring their work home. If they’re happy or sad, if they’re dying of hunger, or loneliness, and if I could ever do something to help. If they ever look outside their window, and wonder if someone, somewhere, is wondering too. 

Sometimes I’m amazed by how big this world is, and sometimes I’m just scared, because I’m so small. But, if you could just hold my hand now, I’d remember that, out of all the allegories in my head, this is real, we are alive, somewhere, being someone, walking down a path carved out just for us. We are one each, in 7 billion ones, but we are here, and we share this planet, and we call it home. I hope you can see right now how beautiful this is, too, but nowhere near as beautiful as you. I love our little lighthouse, but I also love this office floor, and every other place we can meet up to talk about the skies or the sunrise— even if it’s just in my head. Everytime I sat down to watch the constellations of city lights, I realised we were never watching the stars, we were watching each other. And maybe that’s the reason why this night looks so beautiful—not because of the pitch-black skies we see lurking behind the buildings, but because of you, and me, and all the people we can daydream about, even if we never ever meet.

Photo by Thong Vo on Unsplash