Love, Like Comets, Arrives from the Edge of the Universe

In the early hours of April 13th, after the last song had been played and the final note struck, a streak of green cut across the sky, lighting up the corner of my eye, up above the parking lot of Saguijo.

The Lyrids meteor shower happens every April. Named after Lyra — meaning music — the meteors appear to radiate from a point in the sky near the Lyra constellation. The meteors are remnants of Comet Thatcher, a celestial wanderer that leaves behind a trail only once every 415 years, at its perihelion — its closest pass to the Sun. A ribbon across space, a note left behind that Earth passes through each year.

Comet C/1861 G1 (Thatcher) was discovered by amateur astronomer Albert Edward Thatcher in 1861. In our part of the world, the meteor showers — often called shooting stars — further inspire the fleeting magic of summer love. These celestial traces originate from the farthest edge of our solar system — the Oort Cloud, a cosmic freezer filled with ancient ice and dust, stretching nearly 100,000 times farther than the distance from Earth to the Sun. If you could drive there at highway speed, it would take longer than the entirety of human history just to arrive. My imagination for scientific scale is limited, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s trillions of kilometers away. A thousand lifetimes away, by my own reckoning, feels more accurate.

No one can say why Comet Thatcher went astray. Science theorizes that in the chaos of the universe’s creation, it was pulled off course, having passed close to us many times before life truly began. And in its wake, it left traces — a reminder of our origins, of the evolution of our blood, our bones, our flesh. We are borne from the trails that once spread across the cosmos.

Was it the first of the Lyrids? Or was I just drunk enough to believe? I made a wish anyway. Not because I was sure of what I wanted. Not because I believed in anything, really. It just felt like the kind of moment wishes are made for — quiet, fleeting, slightly surreal. It was more like... testing the air.

Maybe it wasn’t even about love. Maybe it was about needing the universe to answer something, to respond in some way. I was testing my faith, or trying to see if magic was real.

“Okay,” I thought. “If this shit is real, bring him to me.” Betting on a lucky pick in the wish upon a star lottery, just to see if the universe would play along.

That night, the city felt too bright to honor the stars. The light from buildings bled into the sky, dimming our view of what could offer a glimpse of infinity. I sat in the back of the pick-up truck, half-drunk, half-listening to someone else’s conversation, baffled that no one else had seen it. I wondered how many beautiful streaks we miss when artificial lights blind our eyes and our minds wander elsewhere.

And just as that green trail burned out across the edge of the sky, he turned.
He saw it too.
I looked. We locked eyes.
His gaze said, I saw what you saw.
It was like a wish being acknowledged before it was even spoken — like a secret handshake between two people who don’t yet know what they’re agreeing to.

Niño and I never talked about that night until years later. But something shifted in the days that followed.
Our hellos held a different weight.
Our conversations slowed down, like something else was quietly moving beneath the surface.
Maybe we didn’t wish for someone to confirm what I had seen. Maybe we were just wishing to be seen.
Because sometimes, that’s the real wish, isn’t it?

The sky took it back in a blink — like a candle being blown out.
But I caught the air left between us, and I knew I’d found him.