Remember the sky?

do you ever look up at the sky like oh there you are I’ve been looking down for so long I almost forgot you were up there, you celestial mood ring, faithful canopy of this strange blanket fort we call earth. why did I spend my whole fleeting day looking at my email instead of you

— tiny fairy tales✨ (@tinyfairytales) September 29, 2020

I love this tiny fairy tale. This Twitter and Instagram account has so many thrillingly beautiful snatches of stories and prose.

I didn’t realise until reading it that yes, I had forgotten about the sky. It’s so easy to be bogged down by the things right in front of us, and forget to look up. It’s also easy to only pay attention to the sky when it’s aflame with a sunrise, sunset or a million stars. But look out your window! it’s actually just stunning as it is.

I reposted this tiny fairy tale on my Instagram story, along with a question box asking people what the sky looked like for them. Reading the beautiful descriptions of the sky was one of my favourite parts of the week, knowing that people had gone out of their way to look up at the expanse of sky and capture it in a few words.

It definitely inspired me to look up at the sky more the last couple of days. Even now, I keep glancing out of my window. There’s only a small patch I can see through the trees, and it’s hard to focus on it through the fly screen, but it’s such a pretty shade of blue.

With this newly developing habit of sky-gazing, you can imagine my delight at the seeing the moon the last few nights. 1st October was the Harvest Moon and the moon was full for the next few days.

The last two nights, my grandma and I have spontaneously run out to the nearby sports field to take blurry photos of the moon illuminating the sky. While our photos barely capture a hint of its magnificence, moments like those — out on the sports field, with the silence, the moon glowing and the dark sky stretched overhead — are exhilarating.

And when I would go to post my indistinguishable photos with a message assuring everyone the moon looked amazing in real life, I would find that family and friends (with much better cameras) had already sent photos, knowing I will always enjoy them.

I know it’s obvious, but there’s something special about the thought that we’re all under the same sky. All seeing the same moon. That is something I have loved about reading my friends’ descriptions of the sky they see, and seeing their photos of the moon. Maybe it looks a little different for all of us. But if I look up at the sky, and you look up as well, the vastness spreads to us both.