I knew a woman
who loved the stars
more than she ever loved people.
She named them all—
every distant light—
but never thought to ask my name.
Still, I stayed.
Each night she called me close
just to listen,
just to hear herself
fill the dark.
She’d point—
“This one,” she’d say—
and give the sky another name.
And I wrote it down
like it mattered.
Like I mattered.
I learned her whole sky
by heart,
waiting for the night
she might name me too.
But I was never a star—
just the dark
that made them visible.
Letters from Xhale the magazine Words that breathe. Stories that Linger, 