To The Stars | Teen Ink

To The Stars

February 14, 2015
By Valor GOLD, Hawthorne, California
Valor GOLD, Hawthorne, California
15 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space



We Jumped and jumped hoping to reach low earth orbit
But all that happened was you hit your head on a wall
Off to the emergency room we went 
You also got a visit from the tooth fairy I heard.
Now we just sit around and laugh about it
Onwards to new stories we marched
You smiled a small gap in your teeth and your blonde hair scattered around
We were at a party
The air smelled of hormones,sweat and and awkwardness of children trying to find their way.
One of the more ignorant children came and asked us
“Are you guys a thing or not really?”
She smiled and looked down to my hand, Quickly and swiftly she took it like a pickpocket takes a wallet.
“Yeah we are” I pulled you closer to my body you laughed a little at how I sounded confused
You smiled and clinged onto my hand that night
I was too scared to make a move
In the end it was always you who went in for the kill
“I smiled at you” As the roads passed by we were going somewhere new somewhere we decided we wanted to go long ago.
We sat in the moonlight looking over an ocean of trees
“Free from the tyranny of our parents” you said while licking off flour form a twinkie
A food that was forbidden in your household
This era of freedom woud last the rest of our lives
The only time I ever made the first shot was when I asked you question
a question that could change your last name
a question that could combine our profits
a question that could give us a tax break
a question that would make us one
“will you marry me?” I said on one knee that Had accidentally landed on a nail
But I ignored the pain and waited for an answer
“yes” as you hugged me and kissed me
And gave me a smile I would soon not forget
We moved into our house a house with mahogany floor boards that smelled like honey
but tasted like chemicals
  one night in bed you asked if I wanted a family
The answer was the same as when I asked you to marry me
Yes
It sadly turned out that you were the polar opposite of what the nile river was like
A minor set back to you a shotgun round to the chest for me
But you picked up the phone and called for an appointment with an adoption agency
We got a kid who turned out alright in the end
We grew old and absent minded
you degenerated into a person that I did not know
Not the same lady I knew that hit her head up on the ceiling trying to reach the stars
Finally the time came when you were in a hospital bed dyeing
The beeping being the only sign that I knew you were alive
The kid who turned out alright convinced me to pull the plug
And you faded into the abyss
And I stayed alive in the fluorescent lit room
Thinking that maybe your soul bounced into space on that hospital bed
Hopefully I can see you one day
But for now
Goodnight and I hope the tooth fairy didn't pay you a visit on your way out.


 



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.