Momentous

I saw a star walking home tonight.
I mean, while I was walking home. Not the star.
It was quite bright, and it twinkled strangely.
I got the feeling it was looking into me,
Like it knew something I could only want to know.
It was cold out, but I unzipped my jacket anyway.
The star made the extra layer seem uncomfortable.

Ten blocks from my warm house, I stood on the street corner, captivated.
Then I noticed all the other stars.
They were twinkling as well,
but not with the intelligence of the first one.
I thought about the distance between them all,
And that somewhere out there, far away,
There glows miles and miles of burning solar life,
Existing in space much as I do, but bigger and more knowledgeable.

Suddenly, everything around me changed.
The street was all at once closer and farther away, and I couldn't understand it.
I couldn't understand anything,
Even things I used to know for sure.

There was a moment, beautiful and infinite but too fast, too fleeting to think about for long, when everything about existence stood out more, like it was contrasted against nothingness to bring all its qualities out of hiding.

Then I sneezed.

I looked back at the star, but it was just a star,
blazing in the night sky among its friends.
I couldn't make it know me anymore.
I looked around me and the street was just a street,
so I zipped up my jacket and walked the rest of the way home.