Walking back from a library program after dark, I cut through the cemetery. The cemetery is unlit, and I’m walking slowly, staring at the Milky Way sprawled overhead, the enormous immensity of the cosmos. In the dark, I hear a cough. I haven’t been paying attention. At first, I think the cough has come from the person smoking on the balcony not far from me, in the house chopped into apartments at the dead-end road, or the people coughing might be around the gap in the fence surrounding the cemetery. I’m headed that way; the gap leads to the woodsy path that will lead me home. That particular place in the path often has trash – Little Debbie’s wrappers and empty Twisted Tea cans.

So here’s the thing: I’m not at all afraid. Despite the village around me, the night is deep. I’m well-hidden, so concealed I stand there thinking, staring up and seeing a shooting star.

I’ve written a fair amount about being a single mother, a broken half, the jilted family, the rage of abandonment. But it’s equally true that I’ve been single for so long now in a society that seems so devoted to coupleness, that I rarely speak of my solitary life. I know very few single parents, at all, for whatever reason. So this night, I do what I’ve taught myself all these years: I drink in my fill of starlight, that piercing Ursa Major hung over the black horizon of the mountains, let her drench me with her power. I make my choice and retrace a few steps, see my friend and her partner on the street below driving along in the dark, friends who would have happily given me a ride, had I asked. But these nights are still balmy and the bitter cold hasn’t set in yet.