The Last Constellation

Risa wakes me up dead middle of the night. Right in the middle of one of my cycles it feels like, because she's pulling me out of something deep. Come on, she says. I ask her what's going on, and she's so excited. There's coffee brewing and she's laid out some clothes and a raincoat for me. It hasn't rained in days.

We get in the car and she drives. I think it's a perfect time to go back to sleep, but Risa won't have it. She wants me to look out at the stars. So I look out at them. There are a lot but none I haven't seen before. I wonder when the last constellation was named, she wonders. I say that I don't know but it was probably a long time ago. Some of these stars are dead, she says, but we can still see their light because of how far away they are. It seems like they're shining even though there's nothing there.

She pulls over, gets out, puts her raincoat on. We're at Juniper Falls, this waterfall just outside of town. She takes my hand and leads me over the gate and across the wet rock. And there's the sound, the water, the rushing, the waterfall in the dark. I follow her cautiously along the path of stones, I'm still not completely awake, one bad step and it's into the pond I go.

We pass under some side-spray to the carved-out bench behind the fall. At the top, through the water, you can just make out a full moon. Risa rests her head on my shoulder and she must know what I'm thinking because she tells me not to fall asleep. You'll sleep when you're dead, she says. Yeah, I want to tell her, but I'll go through life exhausted.