Shooting stars

Marie had never seen a shooting star.

She had heard of them, in the thick bound books she would read at night, and how they granted wishes. And she had a wish she wanted granted more than anything in her whole life. 

After dinner she would spend hours, face pressed up against the glass, staring out at the absent ocean sky. Sometimes, if she had washed the dishes and daddy wasn't too tired, he would walk her down the steep concretes steps to the beach front, where they would sit on the sand. Daddy would set down his old black radio and tune it just right, until the soft whispering of sea captains accompanied them.

"Hear that Marie?" He would say, his eyes closed, softening the wrinkles around his eyes.
"Backing wind.." a ghostly voice murmured "19 knots.."
"Good night to be on the ocean." He would say to himself, and Marie wondered how he could understand these haunting phrases of men he didn't know, when she was sitting right in front of him.

Often times, exhausted from her sky search, she would fall asleep on the cold, sticky sand and wake up in her own bed, grains still stuck between her tiny fingers and toes.

One night, as winter turned to spring, and the nights became warmer, Marie and her daddy sat watching the blackness and listening to static. She had been waiting for a shooting star for months now, but every time daddy saw one, Marie missed it. She wondered if they even existed, or if the books and daddy had been lying about them too. 

She looked up at the sky. The limitless black ceiling that framed her world, full of tiny immobile light.

"Daddy, what makes shooting stars so special?"

He paused, placing his rough hand on hers.
"Oh honey, they're not actually stars. Just pieces of leftover rock falling into the atmosphere and burning up. Then they're gone. They're special because they exist only for a second."

Leftover. Burning. Dying. Disappeared.  She knew what that meant. She knew what gone meant. She knew that "gone" meant an empty chair at the dinner table, Daddy's hair going gray, adults sneaking glances at her and hushed conversations in the living room. She knew that gone meant black, and an ache in her little chest that kept her up at night.

Why would someone wish on something dying? Her eyelashes glistened with tears, and in that moment, Marie decided that she didn't believe in shooting stars. There was nothing special about existing for only a second, because behind you there was only emptiness.

So for the rest of the night- Daddy quietly at her side- she looked at every glistening, stable star in the sky and whispered:

"I wish for mama back."