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De-siderum

by Stéphanie Chasseloup

I was born under planet Saturn, but I have always loved comets, because stars become visible to the naked eye only after many light years and planets are hidden from our sight.
Because you make wishes even when you are not aware of it. 
“ (…) he started to look at the sky, knowing that he wouldn’t be the only one, that night, to attend that death show, the meteor shower that soon would dot the celestial vault, the Earth which in its mortal motion around the Sun passes through the debris stream in the orbit of a comet.
The Perseids were the meteoroids of the constellation of Perseus, the remains of the gradual disintegration of the Swift-Tuttle comet.
Words offer an interpretation of life, he thought, desire comes straight from the stars, de-siderum, the absence of the stars, divining and prophetic, failing which we can only yearn for something that is missing.
It was bizarre that that word born under a black sky echoed between the celestial vaults propped up by stars like a bright shawl.
That night some people would delude themselves, others would hope, as delusion and hope mean the same.
It fell on the Earth at 10.4seven p.m.”

Domenico Dara, Appunti di meccanica celeste,
Nutrimenti Edizioni, 2016, p. 90