I saw my first shooting star and it got me thinking

Stars are fusion factories held together by their own gravity. They are born by fusing hydrogen to helium, and then they keep going on and on, fusing heavier and heavier elements until they're fusing the heaviest of stuff. Eventually, they exhaust their fuel and collapse under their own weight, blowing off their outer layers, showering the galaxy with all these random elements.

Some of which are eventually used to create life.

I saw a shooting star recently. It got me thinking about love. 

How do you place that feeling when you look across a room and feel instantly drawn to someone? How do you characterise that feeling you get when you are on a date and you're showered with wave of calm but somehow also excitement? That knowing when you look into their eyes and feel like you're about to embark on an adventure, whilst simultaneously returning home. Where do you feel love?

Love feels like the colour blue. A wash of calm in the middle of my ribcage. It's awfully close to where I feel anxiety (a heavy, burnt orange hurricane in the middle of my chest). Impossible to feel one without the other, but I really hope one day that changes. 

I saw a shooting star recently. It got me thinking about love. 

The amazing thing is that every atom in our bodies came from a star that exploded. We are all stardust. Our elemental makeup - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and whatever the fuck else was needed for our evolution - was not created at the beginning of time. It was forged in the nuclear furnaces of stars who were kind enough to explode so now we get to be here. And eat mangoes. And drink wine. And try our best to be really really lovely to each other. (though god knows I've failed miserably at times).

Love is stardust. 

It feels like magic.

And it makes this whole world feels like magic.

There's magic inside every stone. every flower. every bird. every spider. every frog. every piece of slightly burnt pancake your overworked mum makes you. 

There's a magic in the trees. the sand. the hills. the rivers. the rocks.

It's hidden the sea, in the wind, in the laughter of your favourite people.

Love is stardust - a deep, wild magic that's as old as this universe itself.

I felt that magic most when you used to look at me and I got to look back at you, and the world felt beating and still at the same time. 

I want to thank you for showing me a love that made me so happy it made my heart burst like the stars do in the end. A love that felt like it could light up the whole universe. A love so wonderful that as I watched stardust falling from the sky, I forgot how much life used to hurt. Even if just for a second.