By Lisa Strong
I spend my days Googling. Unable to disconnect. Scrolling glaze-eyed through junk tabloids until text blurs to gibberish. Tethered to the altar of this cheap desk.
Reverently I trawl charts and graphs. A downward curve has me teetering on the brink of hope, beating my ape chest, shouting from balcony windows, a madman. A bad day plummets me to bed-rumpled, sour breath despair.
Tonight, I tried stargazing. The Starlink satellites rolled across the sky, a marching line of Morse code Gods, an algorithm of our lives. Until they faded, leaving me alone with only the distant, savage stars for companions.
“with only the distant savage stars …” Worth the price for the words, alone. Know the feeling being shared. Sweet!
This is all kinds of relevant, especially now we’re stuck inside. Not to mention it’s absolutely lovely, too. From stars to finish.
Now don’t mind me, I’m going to Google “trawl” and head face-first into a google-loop of time-wasting.
I first read ‘savage’ as ‘salvage’ which gave it a whole new meaning. Great work.
mood
What beautiful writing! The sharp imagery is perfectly punctuated by the rhythm of the text. The message hit us both – POW! Kudos from two readers in the U.S. who often watch satellites pass overhead at night and pray for the pandemic’s end.