Cowboy, Stars and the Wind That Steals Love

Night: the sky's thrown open like a tin can, sharp and metallic under my palms. A distant beacon blinks my name—slow, deliberate, like someone tapping Morse out of habit. I’m a cowboy with dust ground under my nails, talking to satellites the way old men talk to porch lights. Stars answer in little electric sighs and the hiss of radio static; they send me scraps of light like gossip. They whisper secrets the devil left on the roadside; the kind that smell like burned sugar and old leather. I strike a cigarette; the paper bites, the smoke tastes like iron, and the whole sky rearranges itself around my mood. A meteor laughs—quick, bright—and rips a white grin across the dark. I speak to the heavens like they’re a veil I can lift whenever I’m lonely enough. A star tumbles down the highway and sticks out a thumb without saying goodbye. “Give me a ride,” she breathes, small and urgent, “I’m just longing and a scrap of sky.” The wind steals a kiss from my mouth and drops it on some far riverbank where no one looks twice. My hands are empty; there’s grit in my palms that never belonged to me. I scoop that little star up; it fits warm in my pocket like a coin someone pressed just for luck. It carries the weight of a secret and a tune, and the salt-snap of shoreline light. She tells me about villages made of lamp-glow and people who keep walking and never come home. “Hold tight,” I tell her, because my horse only learns to follow the sun and not the moon. The wind laughs; it tucks my promise inside its sleeve and walks off down the dirt road. Above, the stars write my words out on a thin line of silver, neat as a ledger. She asks for a ride to the bend where the road leans toward the sea. She vows to bring back the love the wind swiped from my pocket. But the wind’s a thief with a lullaby on its tongue. It took the squeeze of my hand and left the moon to keep the memory warm. In that black I watched her footprints blur into constellations—soft as chalk, stubborn as law. My horse halted; for a moment the earth held its breath like it was waiting for a verdict. The star opened wide and looked at the dirt like it was reading a map. “If I’m light,” she said, voice thin as a bell, “then maybe I can be the one who saves somebody.” I gave a lift to that flame that asked for a name and a road to follow. She burned in my palms and the hunger eased, like bread pulled warm from the oven. The wind came back carrying only scraps—letters torn at the folds by its teeth. So it was me, the star, and the dust; everything else we braided into a song. I still talk to satellites when night lays down heavy. The wind ferries promises; the stars hand the light back, one slow pulse at a time.