Astrology for Nonbelievers

Astrology for Nonbelievers

On the back porch of this party, everyone is discussing astrology
very seriously, comparing moon and sun signs, toasting beer bottles
and plastic cups of wine to shared rising planets. I offer up my sun sign,
Cancer, the only one I know, and bite back the urge for disclaimers—
I don't believe, not at all, I can't pretend I ever will—in concession
to having met these people an hour ago, having already forgotten most
of their names. I know what Cancer tells them I should be: thin-skinned,
perceptive, indecisive, domestic, and I suppose I am, though there is always
something I am failing to notice, though there is nothing domestic about me
except the ability or compulsion to, wherever I am, imagine it as home.
I could ask which sign is for people who know themselves mostly
in contradicting flashes of conviction, but the party is drifting and anyway
I can guess the answer: Any of them. All of them. A month ago in Utah

I convinced my family to drive back into the national park where we had earlier
hiked for hours, hoping for more stars than even that night in the damp grass
between cabins at my best friend's church camp, but we couldn't escape
the headlights gliding down the main park road or the leaching glow
from the nearest town. If I had been alone I might have hiked deep
into the canyon until all the signs were emblazoned in asterisms above me
and maybe then I could have summoned from each the traits I wish I had
or at least could have known which were honestly mine. But it was cold
in the desert at night and my sister was already drifting to sleep where we lay
head to head at the edge of an overlook, shoulders pressed to concrete, the vanished chasm
beside us, peering up at a thousand distant pricks of light and still craving more.