I had this perfect, astronomical image of my first slow dance with him.  How we would endlessly sway and rotate like planets around the Sun, as if it were something that we were meant to do, travel through space carrying nothing but each other. Ellipsing, spinning, twirling. Our noses pressed against each other, our smiles a mirror, our conversation infinitely deep and revealing. And then he’d move his hand to my neck, cup my cheek softly, and draw me in for the slowest, warmest kiss of all time, like a star being born.

Instead I got the emptiness of space. I attempted to embrace a dwarf planet that clung to me like the darkness of the galaxy. He was stiff, cold, immobile, unable to do anything at all. I tried to spark conversation, a small flicker, a shooting star of dialogue and he snuffed it out like some orb being consumed by a covert dark hole. He stayed away, kept his face far from mine as if he were afraid of burning himself on my heat. My fantasy turned out to be nothing more than an improbable theory.  I tried to wish upon a star that was nothing more than a descending airplane, going back down to the mundane, dull world I wanted a romantic escape from.