An Infinite Summer Night

An Infinite Summer Night
We were lying on the end of the dock. Summer camp was almost over, and there was nothing left to say, we had talked until the dark had come. There were just the stars above us, water below us and a companionable silence around us.
What was home after a time like this?
Was home the place you lived with people you shared blood with by birth or was home the place you were with people you shared blood by scrapes and cuts?
A shooting star!
Wish, wish, wish!
But it is against all hope, we have to go home.
Home and school.
Indifference and bullies.
Pain, inside and out.
Why must this home end?
We float in silence together for a long time listening to the water splash the dock.
Wave to the the nice surveillance satellite as it passes overhead. At least that is what I think it is.
I’ll never be an astronaut -- glasses -- and I am sad.
To go out there, the final frontier, so far away. It would be quiet and plenty of time to read.
Too dark to read right now, but we are quiet together, so many people and they can be so noisy.
I want to go so much sometimes, an escape from this sad, sad world.
I sigh,
I want to fly,
And I do,
I am not on the world any more,
I have been touched by something, something so big.
I am out there, floating amongst the stars.
I am an infinitesimal speck of dust, yet I am floating in the midst of all creation.
Infinity.
The teachers talked about it, yet now, only now do I know what that means.
Everything is so far away, and I am still here, a part of everything and everything a part of me.
There is nothing that couldn’t be from this place.
I, we, all of us are swimming in deep, powerful currents we cannot hope to understand, but I feel the power coursing through me.
“Come on, kids. Time to hit the tents,” says the councilor.
I slam into my body
Slowly I stand and walk to my tent, and try to move myself without ripping myself into shards.
I am not the same in so many ways.
I’ve been touched by the infinite.