THE STARS ARE DRUNK, AND SO ARE WE
The garden lights are dim, the music soft and the people are having fun. I have been embraced by the alcohol haze, my view is blurry as I move it from one side of the garden to the other. My laugh is at times uncontrollable, I am drunk. I’ve had five drinks, he’s had maybe one. The garden is big, one of the widest I’ve ever been, and people are partying all over it. I peed in a bush earlier, and with my trousers still down to my knees, I looked at the sky. With my head tilted back, I felt the drunkest I’ve ever been. In the countryside, to look up at the sky at this time of night is to be trapped. I am smitten by how many stars I can see with my naked eye, I can’t stop looking at them, I can’t stop thinking about them.
Now slouched over a garden chair, I turn my head to look at him.
“If you, Sam and I were the sun, the moon and the stars, which one do you think we’d be?” I ask. The alcohol has compromised my inhibitions, so I speak loudly and nonsensically over the music. “I think you’d be the sun and I’d be the moon, and Sam would be the stars,” I say immediately after, without even giving him the chance to craft an answer.
“Why would I be the sun?” he replies in a disagreeing voice.
“Because you’re the axis that we rotate around. I think we’re a little obsessed with you.” That is all I say, in fear that my words would betray me. I cannot explain to him the many conversations we’ve had in his absence, about how we admire him and think him the smartest person we know.
“I am not the sun,” he says with a firm tone. Unlike me, he is sober right now. “But I can see you being the sun,” he continues.
I shrug. “There is no way I could ever be the sun,” I spit out.
He turns to look at the rest of the party. “It’s interesting that none of us can see themselves as the sun,” he says softly.
Sam is on the other side of the garden, enjoying their party, unaware that this conversation is happening, but we both know they wouldn’t choose themselves as the sun either. I curl my legs up on the chair, and lay my head on his shoulder.
“What makes you think I would be the sun?” I say softly, half hoping he wouldn’t hear me underneath the sounds of the party.
“You know how in tarot the sun represents abundance and vitality?” He replies. I nod, although I actually did not know that. He is more interested in spirituality than I am, but I let him speak. “You bring so much to my life. Not just as a friend, but in general, to my life. And the way you can light up a room. Sometimes when you laugh I feel like it’s the only thing that’s happening. I think I was empty darkness before you came around.”
Anna Cariati, 22, Milan - Italy / Utrecht - Netherlands ✯
“Veera Laitinen (they/she) is a queer writer and avid reader from Finland. Their work has previously appeared in Literally Stories, Nowhere Girl Collective, and Pom Pom Lit, and is forthcoming from Vagabond City Lit in August.”