Dear Amity,

Today me and Jane went to Paul's house. It was tiny, and yellow and there was a lot of cats.

He had orange cats, white cats, black cats, and mixed cats, and they all looked different but they all had the same meow.

Paul brought us into his room. It was very cold and cramped in there. The walls were all blank except for a large image of the night sky which he painted. He passed around some cigarettes and we all took one.

Here,

He pointed,

Is Ursa Major.

And here,

He shifted his finger,

Is Ursa Minor.

He grabbed a pencil and made a mark on his mural.

And here is our significance in the whole scheme of things.

Jane laughed.

I can't see anything.

That's the point.

I looked at Paul's night sky for a while. I don't know why, but I started feeling very weird. I felt as if there was too much of something trying to rush into my body at the same time, but I couldn't tell if that something was beauty or sadness. And before I could stop myself, I started crying. But I was very calm and quiet while doing it. I think the beauty and the sadness cancelled each other out to nothing. Paul noticed.

Wow gabriel, I was only joking. Really, don't take that seriously I'm just a stupid shithead.

Jane noticed. She started to walk towards me. Then she put her arms around me. I could feel her warmth over the hollows of my rib cage. I wanted to put my arms around her but I was too scared to touch such a significant girl with my insignificant hands. So I kept my arms at my side. And Paul walked over, and he wrapped his arms around us. And we were all quiet for a long while, but I could feel Paul's tears moistening the cloth on my shoulder. For that while, we were our own constellation.

She was the circumpolar star, never to fall below the horizon.

He was the binary star, his depression and beauty orbiting around the common mass that was life.

And I was the white dwarf, the dullest star in the universe.

love,

gabriel.