Word Count: 222
She wished upon a star to be a cloud. But then, floating with the wind she thought she’d rather be the sky. Clouds grew big and bulbous with rain, stormy black and mean.
But the sky saw too much living all at once. She saw war in the Middle East. Starvation and disease in parts of Africa. Icebergs crying into oceans. She saw lush green turn golden brown in drought. All going on at once in worldwide chaos.
So she picked another star and asked to be the moon. But what she saw embarrassed and distressed her. Sneak thieves in the night. Muggings, rapes and robbery. At its best she watched in aching loneliness as lovers kissed, caressed each other in her light. She could only handle two nights as the moon before she thought again and wished upon a star to be the sun.
She waited patiently through the early morning hours to sink below the one horizon and pop up above another. Bright and cheerful, making all of mankind smile as earth forever circled. Like a carousel to give each man and woman, boy and girl and every living thing the golden ring of sunbeams.
And at exactly 5:53 a.m. EST, she rose and in a screaming second burned into a cinder no larger than a speck of dust.
