Ree
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.
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Author’s Note: “Ree” was written from the hush between her sentences, from the side of the bed that never learned the constellations of my name. I wanted to stay loyal to the darkness that lets her brightness exist, to the ache of being the witness instead of the wish: the one who maps her sky in careful, quiet lines, knowing I will never be the star she points to, only the space that keeps her stories breathing.
