[ WP ] `` Do you remember the starry sky we created that night ? ''

You dotted out the constellations and I laughed at you. It's apophenia, I said. People so desperate for meaning that they make up patterns where none exist. They'll look up at the stars and see a wolf, or a pair of lovers, or a bicycle - anything other than what you intended. 
 
 It's all mathematics, I said, strewing stars across the cosmos. You can replicate a Pollock with a computer program and a pendulum filled with paint and instructions on how hard and at what angle to push. I splattered a galaxy into existence. It hung unbalanced, a sour note. We should be automating this, I said. Plug in an equation, and let the stars fall where they will. 
 
 You painted in the stars too faint to see, so far away that their light had n't reached us yet. Negative space, you said, when I mocked you for it. There's a whole universe invisible to us, you said, beyond what we can see. The stars guide our gaze upwards, and then we imagine what lies beyond them. 
 
 It's a lot of work for nothing, I said, and blotted out a handful of your precious distant stars in one uncaring stroke. See? No difference. 
 
 We worked in silence after that, the stardust staining my fingers and prickling at my skin, making me eager to be done with it. 
 
 I did n't look up at the night sky for a long time, not really. Just brief upward glances. Just the single solitary moon. It was a part of my past that I'd rather have forgotten. But I looked up at the stars tonight and thought of you, and realized that I could n't tell your part from mine. I'd forgotten the names of all your constellations. I'd forgotten all the misplaced stars that used to irk me. The sky flowed together, a single unbroken canvas of stars across the night. 
 
 I tried to pick out your constellations, to find some meaning in what we'd made, but it'd been too long, too late. I had to make up my own patterns. I imagined a wolf, a bicycle, a pair of lovers. I imagined all the stars too far away for me to see.
