Stars of the Indigo Sky

When there's been a fight and the deadly silence of slammed-shut doors can't lull me to sleep, I sneak out my window onto the roof and talk to the stars. 

You never know just how deep the sky is until you stare and stare and then realize that you can never see through to the end.  And midnight isn't blue, but it's not black either.  It's indigo, with a depth that sinks down into your eyeballs until the whole world is tinted rich purple-blue.  On and in that indigo sea float the stars.  The tiny spatters of light spread across the whole of the ocean sky and far up into it, glowing from generations away.  Still, they always hear me when I need to talk, offering an empathetic shine.

Our conversations start out quiet.  I'll mention how stuffy it gets inside the house, how the fan can't blow the heat from angry words away.  I'll complain that no matter how many pillows you hide under, your hurting heartbeat will always sound loud in your ears and keep you up anyway.  Then I'll rattle off a dozen things that have been bothering me and that it's so stupid that they do because I really don't have a bad life all the time and that complaining doesn't make anything better so why am I wasting my breath on it?

Then I'll stop.  I lie back on the slightly uncomfortable shingles and stare and stare and sink up and up into the indigo.  Under the night I'm bathed in starlight.   I'll let my breath out, not knowing I was holding it in, and with that release come the words.  Slowly at first, words tumble from my throat, tripping over tongue and lips as they all try to escape my mouth first.

I exclaim how beautiful the stars are.  The indigo is so dark, so majestic.  When did the sky get so big?  Does it keep getting bigger, or am I getting smaller?  I feel like a grain of sand in an endless indigo desert.  Where do the stars go when the sun comes out?  Do they retreat behind the blue to sleep in their ocean beds?  How many stars are there?  Do they all have names? 

After that I start to name them.  When I'm done naming them, after my tongue is tired and sticking to the roof of my mouth, dry and dejected, I sigh.

The sigh means I'm not discontented anymore.  The stars - with all of their omniscience and silent conversation - have taken all my empty words and tossed them into the rolling indigo sea, to be washed away and never seen again. 

I draw pictures with the stars for dots.  My constellations are always bigger and more elaborate than those already known.

My eyelids droop.  The indigo carries me away while stars sing silent songs inside my mind.