Universo

A Mason jar lay on the ground, its content, small pieces of paper written with hopes and dreams and fears and sadness, miraculously stayed inside it. It was still early dawn, but the darkness was obscured by a massive dome of sky glow.

The boy was sitting on his bed, watching the scene that was being unfolded beyond his window, in a room of the house next to his. In this early morning, a girl was practicing ballet. She was beautiful – a muse for the boy. He looked at her with a gaze so intense that he felt as if his hazel eyes would come out from their sockets.

In his hands were a notebook and a gel-ink pen. He quickly turned to a blank page and wrote a number of lines. The boy wrote them in a short time, he still wanted to see the girl practicing her dance, and she still was.

She was lithe, and her movement was ethereal, she was flying so high and the room dissolved and became the stage and a sky. The boy could not look away, his breathing was slow, silent, yet heavy – it seemed as if he was afraid that the girl would notice him peeping covertly through the window.

Then the girl stopped dancing, and strode slowly out of her pale pink-coloured room. The boy put down his book and went back to sleep, or at least was trying to do so. He shut his eyes but his mind was still as awake as ever, playing images of the girl like a film projector, rolls after rolls of her.

Oh, her face, oh her eyes, oh her nose, oh her lips.

If she was beautiful, what would he be? In this universe, she was a star, and he was the dark matter. She was a diamond that everyone wanted to have, he existed but he could not be seen.

But the dawn waited for no one, and a new day unfurled, and he was still afraid of giving himself a chance.