you

You lost a friend. I know.
I wish there was more i could do.

You asked me, please, you asked me that night, take a walk with me.

Yes, i said, i would love to (do you even need to ask? i thought). Of course i would. I like you, i grok you, i seriously dig you, and it was a surprisingly warm night; we walked.

Me, silenced - for once - by huge emotional lumps
in my throat doesn't mean i don't want to talk.

I'm so glad you understand.

After a bit of ambling, talking only when we felt like it, we noticed that the stars looked exceptionally bright, and we sat down, as anyone might, next to a single tree, perched near the top of a hill. It was late and the moon was low, and the sky was absolutely clear. Stars, against an ebony background, are truly bright and so uncountably vastly numbered, that to sit and gaze at them was all we were able to do.

Looking at them on a clear night,
it is especially easy to understand how stars have enchanted every civilization,
every thinker, every poet, every lover,
since proto-humans first managed to crane their necks upwards.

The idea came so suddenly it rocked me, and a grin crept over my face. I asked, almost flippantly i tried, whether any of the thousands we could see looked prettier, or more assuming, or more likeable, or more something, to you.

I know you loved her.
I know you still do.
I know that she was burnt away along with all her possessions.

What can i do to help?

Do you have a favourite?

You said, that's an odd question. And you thought for a minute. There shouldn't be a difference between any of them.
Again, silence.
They're stars. They're white, they twinkle, i can't comprehend how far away they are. But i feel some difference anyway.
Is that weird?

Look out at the night sky.
Look at the ones that, to you, are faint, but not so faint that you have to look away to see them.
They often seem to come in clusters,
but a few are absolutely alone.

You pointed to a cluster, high above, intangibly concrete, and then a little to one side.

There, you said, that one. Of course, it took a few minutes' worth of pointing, line-tracing, and astrometrics (two fingers up from the J-shape, then about 45 degrees and a knuckle to the left), to find it, but when i did, we marked it, noted which constellations and well-known stars it was near, and decided that that one, that exact star, would be ours, to keep, to be there forever, and to look at whenever we were separated and felt quite alone.

And it was then that i decided i liked you.

i will never tell another soul which star it is.