Stars
"A strange thing happened the night I called Lynda from my hotel room in Manila. She woke up in my Bangkok apartment and picked up the phone from the bedside table. She didn’t say a word. "It’s okay, Lynda," I assured her. "It’s me." And then I heard her horrified scream. I almost dropped the phone. As it turned out, she had woken up in the dark, disoriented, and was startled by something floating above her, glowing luminously. And then she started laughing. I thought she’d gone crazy. She couldn’t stop laughing and the only word I could make out were “stars…"
“The stars,” she kept saying “the stars…” It dawned on me that she had never seen them before. I was a member of the Thai Astronomical Society and I had glued glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling to memorize the constellations like seafarers did in ancient times.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “The stars… They’re really beautiful.”
- from Wilfredo Pascual Jr.’s essay entitled Lost in Childrensville, this year’s first prize in Palanca.
