Before The Moon Dies

“All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people...You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh!”  -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If you could rearrange the stars, how would you do it? Don’t you ever consider the possibility? It’s something I’ve truly been contending at night.  Tell me, would you take them and make your own constellations? Would you name them and rename them and not tell a soul about it? I wonder, what would they feel like? Who would stop you from catching one and slipping it into your pocket? Replacing the jar of fireflies that don’t shine quite brightly enough anymore. I know how to do it, if anyone asked me. I would place them in such a way that they could be numbered. I would know, then, how many stars it takes to command your attention. I would know, then, what it feels like to touch them. They wouldn’t extinguish in my hands, either. They would warm them. I would know what it feels like to know the stars so well, for myself, and then scramble them up again. To wait and see the world below erupt in chaotic distress towards me for not keeping them in numbered order, for they wish to know now. I would laugh with the stars and keep good company as long as I could, because no one else cared. So, I will go, before the suns rise and the moon dies and I will be in love until I must leave. I will walk away with a star in my pocket.