Stars of Many Colors

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Red stars, bright burning beacons of fire...blue stars, a lustrous imitation of the Caribbean ocean...violet stars, the color of everything lovely and beautiful, yellow stars, like those given to kindergarten children when they’ve successfully learned how to add two and two...green stars, a perfect shade of the perfect poison, simmering in a cauldron just waiting for its next victim…

...white stars, orange stars, aquamarine stars, black stars, golden stars, liquid drops of heaven in the sky...pink stars...gray stars, the color of ash in the fireplace…

Imagining this canvas of colors in space...how would they look, all competing against each other to attract the human eye, twinkling madly in the black abyss. Next to the sun, to all of the planets, to everything unknown that dreamers and thinkers think they can see…

Sometimes she would walk outside at night and look...wonder what it would be like to live up there, to discover...to see all of the shades of purple and red and blue that were so...dead on Earth.

“Miss?”

Man had walked on the moon once...they were sending equipment to Mars...how long until they managed to explore beyond? Did the future hold life outside of all they knew?

“Excuse me, Miss?”

Distant fantasies of going, of leaving...anywhere. Always in the back her mind, reminding her that her facade of contentment, of happiness...it would crumble and crack eventually. It never lasted long.

“Miss,” again, but in a sharp tone this time, making her look up...not at space, not at the stars...at least not at stars in the sky.

There were stars, many of them, in many different colors, but...they were only on a faded quilt that was being slowly pushed closer and closer to her on the counter of the dusty antique shop she worked in. A price tag hung off the corner of $25 dollars.

“Sorry,” mumbled half-sincerely at the older man, peering at her with watery ice blue eyes. “Daydreaming, I guess.”

His laugh reminded her of the kind that people give unfunny comedians as a courtesy. Well, she never claimed to be a comedian.

“Twenty-five dollars, please.”

A crisp 50 was thrown onto the white surface flecked with black...why they had chose that counter was beyond her...it always looked dirty.

“Keep the change.”

Another joke, and she did crack a smile at it. “Right.”

But it wasn’t. He was looking at her again with a confused look. “Really, keep it.”

The corner of the bill lifted up when the door opened permitting another rare customer, a gust of wind sweeping into the shop. She watched as it set itself back down. “Why?”

She was peering at the man herself now, trying to locate the reason for his generosity behind those icy eyes.

“Always happy to help local shops,” was his only answer, complete with the first smile she had seen from him.

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

Only a whisper of noise floated to her ears when she slid the bill off the counter to shove it in the register. “That a gift?” she asked, inclining her head at the quilt. He followed her gaze, taking a second to stare at the stars just like she had.

“Yes, a gift. I…” then his voice teetered off, and she stopped breathing for just a moment, before he continued. “I’m sick...cancer, stage 3 lung...and my daughter just had my first grandbaby, see...so I wanted to leave something for her to remember me by.”

Something in her chest felt like it was solidifying.

She tried to swallow, but it got stuck in her throat. “Oh. How...um...how long?”

My condolences, I’m sorry, death is but the next great adventure...anything but what she had just said from her idiot mouth.

But he didn’t seem offended. “Four weeks, they said, but doctors are like weatherman...never quite accurate.”

Then she did laugh a little...bad...she’d only known this man for 10 minutes, had learned he was dying, and she liked him. She couldn’t handle much more loss.

“No, not normally. Thank you, and...I hope your granddaughter enjoys her quilt.”

He nodded, fingering the material. “It’s a pretty one.”

With that, he turned and, after nodding at the other customer browsing in the books-that-are-priced-way-too-goddamn-high section, left.

...Leaving her to contemplate yet another circumstance of the universe that always seems to be dropped into her lap...the only reaction that she could ever muster was a repeated mouthing of ‘what the fuck’.

It was also a stark reminder that death was always there, looming, waiting for everyone and everything...the final truth of life, making everything before it fleeting and temporary.

Half the shit in this shop was only there because someone had died and whoever was left behind didn’t want anything to do with their leftover junk.

Sometimes, when she had no customers (which was all the time), she liked to roam the aisles and peer into the cases...wondering about the stories...like the antique wedding ring in the back of the shop that was missing a stone...or the old sewing machine table that had notches carved into one of the legs…

Brand new things never interested her...they were fresh, untouched...they hadn’t seen the horrors of the world yet. But everything in this shop had. And those horrors found their place within them, within her, within the people that had owned them.

In a way, death was a reprieve from them...those horrors. Beautiful things died, roses...horses, hummingbirds, children…

Everything. Men. Women. Customers that wanted to buy a pretty quilt for their infant grandchild.

Even stars died. And not only that, when you look up at the sky to see them glittering and shining, they were already dead.

The only thought that plagued her for the rest of the day was...when that grandbaby was older, and she looked up at the stars...would she remember the old quilt that her grandfather had left for her?

Would she see the stars as all of those colors?

Or would she be blind to the beauty of that rift of imagination between reality and the only place where anything can be anything...the mind.

She hoped that the quilt would be more than a unappreciated memory.

The man deserved that.

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