The stars

"Walking down the street, where I walk in memory morning, noon and night, I could not tell what it was, precisely, that reduced me to such wretchedness. Indeed it was not death but rather the growing conviction of not having yet lived. All I could tell was that the stars were as singular and as wondrous as I remembered them and that they seemed like a link, an enticement to the great heavens, and that one day I would reach them and be absorbed into their glory, and pass from a world, that at that moment, I found to be rife with cruelty and stupidity, a world that had forgotten how to give."

From "Returning" by Edna O'Brien

Plumage star pattern © Jennifer Phillips