Polaris

“Find the North Star and you’ll never be lost,” someone told me a long time ago—it might be my dad or my grade school teacher, I couldn’t remember.
 
Every day, when darkness falls and when the heavenly bodies align, I look up at the sky and search for the pole star. There are times when I can easily locate it, as if some celestial force ties my gaze with it. There are nights, and lots of it, when I couldn’t find it, no matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I clean my eyeglasses and squint my eyes.
 
When I was younger, I could easily look for it, because it is always the brightest among the constellations. It was easier to spot it, because my world was a lot simpler and clearer then. And maybe because I was a bit braver then to examine the vast universe before me, to probe the unknowable, and to explore the things that scare the hell out of me.
 
These days, my night sky remains starless, as if the gods finally decided to test how far I’ll go without the light, as if they are forcing me to look beyond myself and the universe around me. Somewhere between the tilting of my world and my constant search for its balance, I got lost and I could not find my way back home. 

I look up and the skies are dark. My North Pole is nowhere to be found.