The stars look brighter now that I actually watch them. Their shine constantly changing between a bright gleaming light to a faint glint in the night sky. They are the light that flickers on and off at night, with most typically hesitate to turn on. There are so few at first, and so it takes a while for my eyes to notice what I didn't see at first glance.

The night has become an addiction, it gives me a subtle kind of comfort that I indulge into with pleasure related to oddity. When the night greets me, it envelopes me in the darkness with the stars weaved into it. The wind plays with my hair, brushing it back from my face like my mother once did. The animals of the obscure night hum in unison as they create a unanimous melody for the song of the dark and I watch the stars in dull amusement as they try to intimate a beacon to show us that someone is watching over us.

We never watched the stars, now that I think about it. At night when we were with one another, we were either sleeping, drunk, or trying to sleep.

I believe it was you who once told me that everyone was stupid for making metaphors for twinkling stars since they don't actually flicker, it's just the Earth's atmosphere refracting the light.

Somehow, I felt a little odd after knowing that stars are a constant ray of light that attempts to shuffle through the atmosphere in an attempt to be perceived with the result of their efforts being a mere glint in our night sky.

That made the stars look a little different from before; maybe a little sadder, perhaps even a little indifferent towards them. They stopped holding any meaning to them, but I never really cared for them in the first place.

I don't really mind if you came back just to see the stars from our sleepy town, just coming back here would be good enough for me.

Shannon told me you weren't ever coming back and that you would never want to see our faces unless it were to say how fucking stupid we were. To force us to look at the ruins of what our reckless youth left behind and remind us how we'd never be able to fix it.

Charlie told Shannon that it wasn't really our fault that it happened, but she didn't look at us when she said it, instead she watched her fingers play with the loose ends of her maroon jumper.

Diana scoffed with an unconvinced look before inhaling another cigarette with trembling hands. Toby stared at the ground below his feet and nudged at the dirt that surrounded him with distaste.

And I watched the bright blue sky mock us with its joy.