Shoreline Made of Broken Stars

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The shoreline was made of broken stars that nobody wanted anymore. They washed up during the night like drunks who had mistaken the lake for a cheap motel. By morning, they were scattered in the sand, clicking in the wind like glittering dentures.

I walked along the water trying not to step on anything sacred. The sky was the color of a pencil eraser used too many times, rubbed down to a tired gray. The hills slouched in the distance, pretending they weren’t listening.

A man once told me that stars never really die; they just get recycled into other things. Maybe that’s why the sagebrush by the waterline had a sort of secret glow. If you bent down close enough, you could hear them whispering to each other about their past lives — long nights spent hanging over Nevada, or slow drifting centuries in the arms of Andromeda. Now here they were, reincarnated as dry shrubs trying not to get eaten by jackrabbits.

I picked up a small piece of star near my boot. It had cooled off. It felt like a pebble someone had tried to teach how to shine. I put it back because it didn’t seem right to carry something that had already fallen twice.

The water lapped at the rocks in that soft, broken-clock rhythm lakes are fond of. If you stared long enough, the ripples would start to look like someone quietly erasing time. That’s when I realized the lake wasn’t a lake at all. It was a long, deep mirror for things the sky didn’t want to remember.

A breeze came up from behind the hills, carrying the smell of dust and something older than dust — maybe disappointment, maybe hope wearing a different coat. The hills pretended not to notice.

I walked until the broken stars thinned out and the shore turned into ordinary gravel, which was a small relief. Ordinary gravel doesn’t ask you for anything. It just sits there being gravel. The stars, even fallen, needed you to believe in them a little.

By the time I reached the end of the shore, the sky had started to lighten in a way that made the lake look briefly alive, like it was breathing slow and peaceful breaths. For a moment I thought I could hear the whole landscape sigh.

I turned back toward town, leaving the broken stars where they were. They didn’t belong to me. They belonged to the shoreline, to the gray sky, to the hills that pretended not to listen.

Besides, someone else would come along someday and find them.
Someone who needed a little light.