Oh Twinkly Stars, Oh Twinkly, Twinkly

My celestial honor guard sways with each step and washes away on every warm wave.

I stood for long moments, minutes innumerably finite, with my feet in the nighttime rhythms of the Pacific and my head craned upward toward the stars. My gaze wheeled among the constellations and I considered my life and your life and his life and her life. I spoke our stories out loud to the stars, imagining and deciphering the truth as near as I could. They twinkled back but offered no judgment on my construction.

We surfed through the sunset today, as we so often do, and, from my board, I watched the sun slip into the ocean and wondered at the moon's shiny crescent and the lone brilliant star over the water. As waves passed, the stars rose in the east as well and those nearest the horizon seemed to sparkle white and red and green and blue, perhaps with the departing day's heat?

And then, returning to this night, when I looked down at my feet happy and traipsing randomly in the sand and water, I found impossibly reflected those brightest stars from up above me. They surrounded my position and walked with me, never quite in sync but always present. Until, until, a wave rolled across this glistening mirror and obscured my protectors—but they returned. They always glistened and reflected again, constant however indistinct across those countless (but likely counted, once) miles.

I looked between the evidence of my protection and the mystery of the cosmos. Which stars were these from above, who offered their companionship down below? I discovered no answer, identified no specific spirit: I was heartened regardless. And yet do not, please, think that I found god, but shit if life and all that isn't magic.

And then I turned slowly and surely back to the line of trees and lights up the beach: there were brownies cooling at home. Onward, always, and never quite alone.