I am Avery Ferguson, a Sophomore at Conway High School. I wrote this short piece a few months ago when I just really wanted to escape. This piece is a reflection of me trying to run away from all the bad things in my life, but leaving all the good behind. This is Pale Blue Flowers.

We wander the golden, dusk lit streets of Paris. We admire the shrubs shaped to be a college art student’s piece of abstract imagination. We watch old men discuss the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle through a cafe window. They sip shots of sweetened espresso from miniature cream colored cups before moving onto brandy in intricately carved crystal and conversations of Stalin. 

We walk along this cobblestone until the widow’s veil of night finally makes its’ much anticipated appearance. With Apollo gone, his sister shines in the glory of nothingness. The stars are bright holes in the jar of our universe allowing us to escape if ever we figure out how to stretch them just wide enough for our earthly bodies to fit through. With the holes in the lid of the paint stained mason jar, we can finally breathe the dark, grounding air of something other than our existence.

 Time melts into itself as the business and hostility of society melts like the sugar in the men’s coffee. We can travel to the park for the sole purpose of sitting on an ancient stone bench. One of crumbling concrete with butter yellow dandelions poking out the cracks of the bottom. The old men patiently sit at their chessboards waiting for their last challenge of the night, a sandy haired teenage boy bound to lose in five moves, or one of his fellow elders, duking it out for the title of Grand Chessmaster. They will sit here as long as it takes, even if the yellow and green grow through the cracks of their own feet. The stars guide the men’s moves as they guide all of our lives. They have been here for us since the beginning of time. 

The North Star continues to direct us as it has our ancestors for the past millennium. The ancient thinkers, the criminals, the explorers; they all loved the stars. No matter where we are, they will guide us home; that is their job; that is their purpose. They allow us to breathe their cosmic peace and assurance. Even when we haven’t the slightest idea of where our home is, or where the next one will be, they constantly have their arms open wide, ready to take us to theirs. The stars ground us in reality. They pull us back from our minds. They, however well intentioned, wrench us from the cobblestone streets and cream cups of espresso and the debate of the creation of the universe. 

They drag us piece by piece until we are, yet again, in our reality, what they have decided is our home, however depressing it may be. The ancient beings show us the vomit-covered dirt of an alleyway. They bring us back onto the cold floor of someone else’s home. All reality is not bad, but we always seem to think our mind’s creations are superior. We could belong to a small farm in Ohio; blue cornflowers scattered throughout the fields, waltzing with each other in the wind. Maybe there are chickens, clucking their songs of Spring and leaving surprises in the blossoming squash plant. 

This reality should be considered amazing and better than the world of the mind because it is, in fact, beautiful, and, above all else, real. But, because we are only born into it and had no choice in deciding it for ourselves, we resent it. We crave the statues of old men protecting their kings because it is ours. No one else chose it, and it belongs to no one else unless we choose to share it with them. The men pondering philosophy in their tweed suits, fraying at the edges, will always feel superior to us, writing our own philosophy while a crown of pale blue flowers gets crushed under the weight of our own two feet.