Look up once a night

As a kid I was sure the moon was following me. I'd walk home at night, glance up, and there it was, keeping pace, while the houses and trees slid past. It took me years to learn the boring reason: it's so far away that walking down a street doesn't change where it sits in the sky at all, so it looks like it's walking with you.

The boring reason didn't ruin it. If anything, it made the moon stranger.

I still believe, maybe naively, that if everyone looked at the night sky once a night, they'd live a little differently. Not because of some cosmic revelation. It's just hard to stay wound up about a deadline or an argument while you're looking at light that left its star long before any of your problems existed.

Every time I do look up, the same thing happens. Everything gets bigger than I imagined, and the mess we've made for ourselves down here gets a little smaller.

The moon still keeps pace when I walk home. I still check.