We speak better through silence.

White plaster covers the cracks. The layer of dried paint holds together the shedding wallpaper. Like a collagen injection, the paint hides the room's imperfections under a synthetic mask. As I lie on my bed, I stare up at the rough, uneven design of the whitewash, straining to prevent the ceiling from breaking apart.

I forget why I was so desperate at the time to cover up the imperfections. At the time, I remember obsessing over every ugly flaw, no matter how minute it was, so self-conscious I was about the ugly decay. Maybe part of me just wanted to fix the inevitable. But there is nothing more confining than clinginess and that is all my ceiling makes me think of, like it is clinging to a beacon that no longer exists.

On lonely autumn nights like today, I spend my time spread-eagled across my bed, surrounded by shadows. My long limbs dangle off the bedside, and my bare feet, damp from the shower, caress the wooden floor. The heat of my skin diffuses into the cool air as I tangle my fingers in my wet hair, letting the strands part and drip water on the floor. Shifting my eyes across the room, I look at nothing except for formless shapes of uniform color. My eyes catch the dim outline of the lamp that suspends in the middle of the ceiling, and I remember the days when that lamp wasn't the only source of light in my room. Back then, my room felt like infinite space unbound by the concept of time, and I spent my days reminiscing about the past and fantasizing about the future under the stars. Buzz and I shared our dreams together on this bed.

It was Buzz's idea to put glow-in-the-dark stars on our bedroom ceiling. Buzz is my cousin Beatrice, but we started calling her Buzz when she was six years old, because she was obsessed with the movie Toy Story. "To infinity and beyond" became her catchphrase, and Buzz Lightyear was her idol. When my aunt was diagnosed with lung cancer and Buzz moved in with me, we decided to remodel my bedroom with a Toy Story theme. We pasted glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling to resemble the view Buzz Light year might have had from his home in space, and we bought bed sheets with Woody and his cast decorated on them. After all, Woody kept Buzz grounded.

I was the one who had to keep my cousin grounded too. I was horrified when I came home that day and saw what Buzz had done to my room. She told me, "They were so pretty, I couldn't NOT get them!" and I retaliated, "Remember, this is my room!" It was one of the few times I regretted having Buzz stay with me instead of taking our guest room. I thought of changing my mind that moment and asking my mom to switch Buzz's room until Buzz giggled and said, "Remember that scene in Boys and Girls when Freddie Prinze Jr. made love under glow-in-the-dark stars? We both swore that our first times would be like that too?" That mollified a little, and I agreed reluctantly to have the stars stay. After all, since I probably would never make love to someone as hot as Freddie Prinze Jr under the stars in my life, it wouldn't harm to dream I could.

We didn't do a lot of making love under the stars, but, Buzz and I did do a lot of dreaming. Remember was our favorite word back then, and those glow-in-dark stars became a sort of journal, charting our memories down in those teen years. We shared secrets and experiences, whispering under the bed covers until we drifted off to sleep to the sound of our own voices. Stuff like firsts and lasts were noted, and we made constellations from those memories. First kiss, first date, first boyfriend. First break up. First C in a class. First and last time skiing (I broke my leg that time). First time in the emergency room. First time my aunt's cancer remitted. First time it came back again.

My bedroom became a safe haven, a sort of live-in time capsule where time didn't matter, nothing could affect us, as long there were stars above us. We had a scrapbook in the sky, pasting more ones as time went on. It was our favorite past time to simply lie on our backs on the bed in perfect silence, gaze at our stars, and trace the outlines with our fingers. It was a comforting ritual, a way we could distance ourselves from our memories, good and bad, and problems by imagining they were stars, farther from us than imaginable in our little bedroom. We felt more alive and infinite than ever with the tangible records of our lives above us.

After my aunt died when Buzz was in college, we took the stars off. There wasn't a point to them staying. Buzz wasn't living at home anymore, I was going to go to college soon, and there was just too many stars on the wall. It was a wonder we never noticed it, I guess time has a way of changing you perceive space, but the stars had multiplied over the years, suffocating the ceiling and leaving it with no empty space to breathe. It was too crowded, there were too many stars, and they had to go.

Now though, in retrospect, I wish we hadn't taken them down. Not just because the ceiling looked so empty and pasty, but also I missed the memories of those times when Buzz and I hanged out under them. Those nights we shared, the memory of a perfect silence, they're all long forgotten. This is a different kind of silence, and I'm still not fluent in it. A silence with interjected with sounds of the phone ringing for far too long and texts being looked at and not replied to. I don't see Buzz very much anymore except during Thanksgiving and Christmas break, and I make it a point to reach out to her especially after Aunt Lin's death. But she never responds to me, and when she does, it's the brief courteous message. Our Facebook friendship is limited to my liking her college photo with friends I have never met. It was as if getting rid of the stars, or killing them, had created a chasm in our relationship.

I feel a light brush against my skin. Opening my eyes, I see pieces of the ceiling fall slowly on top of me. Flakes of the dried whitewash sprinkle over my bed. I laugh aloud. If only Buzz Lightyear could see how his precious space looks like now. I almost automatically taste dry chalk in my mouth as the dust in the room coats my tongue.

Despite my best efforts, everything still ends up in pieces.

Sitting up, I take my smart phone from my drawer and prop it open. I take a picture of the jaded ceiling. Quickly tapping the screen, I type a message to my cousin.

Hey, remember when we put glow-in-the-dark stars on my bedroom ceiling? Well, it looks like they need to come back, because it's a mess without them!

I click send. I put the phone in my pocket and get up from my bed. Taking one last look at my bedroom, I smile and then close the door behind me.

But still, space is meant to be traveled across. Right Buzz?