Beyond Sky

BEYOND SKY
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Where the other kids watched Orion and the Great Bear, Megan saw right through them. In the forever dome above the forgotten Drive-In out back she lost herself for hours until her mother’s shouting called her in to bed. Her black ballet slipper sort of shoes felt over the crumbly grey asphalt while tufts of brown grass tickled her chin and every three yards a steel pole rose from the ground, chips of pink paint clinging to the parts that weren’t rough with rust. Green and yellow wires poked out from many of the poles. She only knew the colors from the daytime. They were all shadow on shadow now. Severed from their voiceboxes, they stood only waiting for the end of the world, bearing witness for their dilapidated screen which was on its last behind them.

Megan grabbed a pole a swung herself slowly around it, knowing the scratchy surface like she knew her own bed. Her eyes were fixed beyond the stars peering hard into the black you only got out here in the abandoned town.

She wanted to blow the top off the sky just to see what was on the other side of the universe.