'Wish Upon A Star' by Andrew Anderson

Why do humans, after all these years, still teach their children to wish upon a star? 

Stars don’t have ears, though we can still be sympathetic listeners. I can’t avoid hearing another of your offspring, standing in the wet grass of the garden this evening, and gazing up hopefully at me. At us all.

You’ve tangled me up in your web of fibs, long is your reach. I’m in a right moral quandary now at being unable to grant their unrealistic desire. If I had a heart it would be breaking on their behalf.

Okay, I might be laying it on a bit thick now, but I can’t do anything, obviously. 

I’m just a star, and not even one deemed important enough to have been given a name yet. Or to see the sights. Not like the others that I share this black canvas with.

Not like The Moon; that luminous and silent type who sits above your world, doing very little except lazily brushing her invisible hand through your oceans now and then.

Or The Sun; so full of self-importance that he actually named himself. Not that any of you down there will remember him doing so, it was so long ago. Sure, he’s more bloated than the rest of us around here; he burns with an intensely bright orange fire; and you can’t exactly ignore him when he is awake, try as you might. Such conditions shouldn’t allow for the self-naming of celestial beings.  

And not like the planets. Those lifeless balls of elements, all named after mythical gods from your already dead civilisations. They who dance and spin around this orange guy at varying speeds, silently confirming his importance without questioning why. 

Though apparently not you Pluto, I hear you’re out of the club these days. That’s got to hurt, being left out in the cold. 

Getting back on track. No, how could you expect me, a nameless ball of gas ablaze billions of light years away, to grant wishes like some cosmic genie?  

I’m willing to meet you halfway on the fabrication, if I you can promise me some peace. Isn’t it probably easier to just tell your offspring — as many of you erroneously still do — that all the stars you can see with your naked eye are already burned out millions of years ago? 

We feel burned out at times.

Blame it on the stars. Shake your fists. Console your darlings.

It’s surely easier that way, when their wishes don’t come true.