Look up. Stare at the night sky.
See there?
A star-- just a bit further from the rest.
It glimmers like a fish caught in the precipice of a giant wave, uncertain whether to ascend toward the sky or descend deeper into the abyss. So close-- I can reach out and pluck it. Sometimes a star seems close enough to be a gemstone on a finger, dangling from a hook in an ear, a stud on a bellybutton at late night tattoo parlor visits, at piercing shops with other friends who laugh in the face of constructs-- the folly of bigotry and narrows. Another decoration on unmarked skin-- writing in ink and metal what the universe was too afraid to make me.
Sometimes, the stars seem closer to me than any human can ever be. I like that theory. We are of stardust, and to stardust we return.
Sometimes, I drag my nails against my skin and see the soft crescent imprints like moons and I wonder where the time goes. If light years are really as far as they say…
I wonder what the distance is in perception. If someone who looks at me can ever see the way I see myself in the mirror. Or is it as a scientist adrift amongst cosmos and nebulae, trying to name the planets yet failing to see the entirety of the galaxy?
Physicists get it. Quantum physicists do. They’re a bit like alchemists vying for the Philosopher’s Stone. Weaving in deities between scientific codas. Quantum physics does not limit particles but expands upon their nonconformity. Particle-wave duality. No single atom is fixed-- so how can we expect human constructs like gender to be?
I reach up into the night sky and gather a single star to my being. It’s soft and warm, a bubble in blue. There is no singular word for gender in my language. Just like there’s no single star in the sky. I put the star to my lips-- it tastes of nothing. Of everything all at once. Bitter. Sweet. Medicinal. Homey. The star falls past my lips, my neck, my belly. It settles there, glowing for all the world to see.
Like stars, I am close to you now. With these words, I am woven in your story. Come with me. Look up-- up at the sky. Boundless. A celestial possibility.
Like stars, there is no loneliness now. Come, sibling, do you feel it too? How the world says one thing, but we know the truth? The truth: we are of stardust.
Let’s set the sky free.