When they were younger and the relationship was new, fun and exciting, they had started making origami stars, writing dreams of the future inside them.
“When we’re married, we’ll open one a month and do whatever’s on it.”
It had seemed like a great idea at the time. A way to keep the magic of their relationship alive forever. A way to keep the love between them exciting, even though at barely seventeen and a month into dating, they still hadn’t said those words yet.
For three and a half years, they created the origami stars with wishes and dreams written inside. Through high school drama, senioritis, college admissions and refusals, community college, they created stars.
A month before his twenty-first birthday, he died. A fluke accident. Something had gone wrong with the brakes and it had been raining. He couldn’t stop and drove straight into a billboard on the freeway on the way to see her.
For weeks, it felt like they had died with him too. All the light had left them and they rarely smiled.
His birthday was a somber occasion. They spent it alone in the dark of their bedroom, having gathered all the origami stars they had made. The dreams that could never be.
A single candle burned.
One by one, they began to open them.
One by one, they began to burn them.
One by one, they went up in a puff of smoke.
All the dreams they’d held so close, went up in smoke so easily.