In My Garden of Starlight

Oh, my child, running from my garden, do you wonder at what you left behind? Oh, my child, now hiding from the darkness, wishing for a refuge, do you hear the whisper in your storm? Come back, my child— back into the garden, for between these walls, beneath my trees, in the midst of my murmuring creation, there is rest. You will taste peace. Breathe, as the wind blows, and savor my promises— hold them in your trembling lungs; they are faint but sweeter than those dark, bitter gales beating against you. I am pursuing you, pushing your clouds away. Dear heart, feel the sun and know my heart is like a thousand suns; my light is like a million stars, and you cannot lose me. The sun may come and go, but its warmth, its life-giving light that has made your garden grow, always lasts until dawn. And, my dear, the stars have watched you every day— smiled as you bravely entered into darkness just to see if you might touch them, just to see if they might let you sail among them, and they have not forgotten you, even as you fall asleep and wait for the greatest star to rise and give you warmth. Perhaps the closest you’ll ever come to touching stars, dear one, is to embrace their love letters, written with unapologetic pens, falling to earth in valiant strokes of rays that beam at the thought of you, and as they give their lives— burning brighter— perhaps bright enough that their light might reach you, that they might touch you and learn your name, they have given you life. Yes, it is by starlight that my garden grows. So, perhaps we all are in love with the stars, and some simply forget to look up, and dearest, dearest child of mine, perhaps you, in all your reaching, have forgotten to grasp what your stars gave you to tend. Dearest, in this garden of mine, you have always found my peace, perhaps because in a place so full of starlight, as my murmuring creation breathes it in, you see the world as I intended: that one from above gives, that one below receives and grows— but never forgets to look up when the sun rises, nor mourns when the sun sets, in love with the way all things shine despite the dark, and all things grow despite the cold.