When graduation came and he watched her walk down the aisle, diploma in hand, he remembered the first night he met her.

It was similar to New Year's, with a sky full of stars and a campfire with friends. She sat there with her head to the clouds, watching for any streaks of light that indicated a gigantic piece of rock flying through space in speeds fast enough for people to mistaken it as a star.

He saw her face against the light of the fire, and thought, these feet weren't made for me to walk up to you. But he liked it that way, watching her from across the hill.

But a few moments later, the wind picked up, and he noticed that she was shivering despite the jacket she had around herself. He had an extra blanket in his bag, if he remembered correctly...

When he had stood up from his seat on the log, he thought, it didn't have to be love already, or love eventually. What only concerned him was that she was there and he was here, and they didn't know each other.

But the night was cold and they were both stones, so who were they to deny the sparks that came from their meeting?

He needed to know her name.

.....

On the night before her departure, a town-wide blackout occurred.

And he was at her house. Helping her pack, with three other friends. She was in the middle of talking, and he was downstairs talking to her brother, when the lights went out and he heard the girls give out a few squeals of surprise. Her brother dug out a flashlight and told him to bring it to her.

When he arrived at her room with a flashlight in hand, she already had a candle lit on her bedside table, and she was reading them a poem from a notebook he knew well.

"For I am the sky, and I tell you: when I arrive I will embrace you. For I am the night, and I tell you: stay here, by my side, and live in comfort."

He turned off the flashlight.

.....

On nights when he would miss her he would stay up and watch the faint glow of the stars in the jar, thinking that in a sense, she was here. Her days were here, with him, and he liked to think that the little pieces of glass he liked to hold in his palms on some nights were little pieces of her, that a new piece of her would be with him every night, that a new piece of her would stay with him every night, despite the fact that she was gone.

This went on for so long that at some point in time he had to transfer the marbles unto a new jar to make space for the ones that were to come. And it was nice to hide the old little pieces of her that had kept him up all night for the past year, because now he had an empty jar, and he was waiting for new pieces of her to hold in his palms at night.

.....

At night, the sky is mostly void.

But only mostly.

END