Ephemeris of a Returning Star

You left to seek a quieter sky,
to chart your course beyond the reach
of our old gravity.
And when you vanished,
the heavens inside me collapsed—
constellations broke apart,
their silver lines unthreaded,
their names forgotten by the night.

For a while,
I wandered among the ruins of stars,
gathering fragments of myself
like fallen meteors from dark fields.
One by one,
I placed them back into orbit.
One by one,
I relearned the language of silence.

And in that vastness,
I found a peace I did not know existed:
not the bright peace of dawn,
but the deep and patient peace
of distant galaxies—
the kind that asks for no witness,
the kind that turns alone
and remains complete.

I became my own northern star.
I learned the comfort
of moons that rise unseen,
of quiet planets
keeping faithful circles around themselves.

Then you returned.

Not like a storm,
but like a familiar comet
crossing the edge of my sky,
and suddenly the old tides remembered you.
The stars I had carefully arranged
shifted in their places.
The heavens I had made for myself trembled.

And I hate this—
how your name becomes a constellation
I cannot stop tracing;
how the mind invents new ephemerides,
new alignments, new what ifs
written in invisible ink across the night.

What if our orbits had held?
What if we had remained
two stars in the same house of heaven?
What if the universe
had been kinder?

But stars can deceive.
Some lights we love
have already burned away,
and what reaches us
is only their memory.

You may visit this sky,
if you wish.
You may pass through
like a comet remembered with tenderness.
But you cannot stay.

I have learned
that peace is a fragile astronomy,
and solitude,
though quiet,
is the observatory that keeps it.

So I will carry on
through these gentle, star-filled nights,
keeping watch over the constellations
I rebuilt with my own hands.

And if I think of you,
I will think of you
as a celestial body once beloved:
beautiful, distant,
moving in another orbit—

while I remain here,
faithful to my own stars,
guarding the small universe
I have finally learned
to call home.