Year 11 Logan Park High School
There once was a man who got lost in the stars.
Within the deep pits and craters that pepper the galaxy he stayed, unmoving, forgotten. The writhing mass of the cosmos is where he always dreamed to be, and his wish was granted.
Let me tell you his tale, for it is an interesting one.
He was alone most days, by choice of course, dreaming of the land above, the vast expanse of splintered glass and broken planets. The man would stay awake all night, wrapped tight by the silks of twilight and shadows as he lay down on the concrete outside of his house.
He watched the planets pass, the universe shift and undulate around his still form like a restless beast. The arms made of nothing and everything held him. They caressed him, whispered sweet words in the dark which he craved to hear over the merciless daytime.
He was greedy, sifting through the shards of solar systems with unforgiving hands, believing that he was there, that he was a million miles away from Earth. He wasn’t though, and soon enough the light from the sun reached his blackened eyes and he left, retreating to the house that he called his home.
Long years passed and the man’s screams for the world above became louder, shrieking and hollering to be let in, to be taken away.
One day however, his prayers were answered, and the same arms that held him mere hours ago grabbed him, swinging him far into the cosmos. Bright colours skated past his tumbling form.
Was he falling or rising? He couldn’t tell. Soon enough, though, the man came to a stop, and the suffocating press of the never-ending silence of space engulfed him.
He stumbled and ran through the endless tides of rippling time. The scraps of nebulas and bright stars burnt him, scalding his skin as he waded.
He searched for Earth, no-one knows why as the man got what he wanted. He got all he asked for, and he wasn’t happy.
He scrambled through the veils of space matter and frozen time, but there was no path back for his burned feet.
The intricate catacombs of endless void trapped him, squeezing his body into tangles and stiff knots of bone and blood. He would search for light year upon light year to return to the rock that formerly housed him, but he was unsuccessful.
Darkness chewed on his thin muscles, swallowing him as he sank into the craters formed from decades of movement from space itself.
He let himself lie there. Forgotten. Alone.
See, little one, take this as a lesson.
