Silent Night

It's quiet, or the voices are, though the electric furnace burrs, the fan drones like the rotundest of grumbling bees, grandfather pendulates and wags his finger in time, the magic laundry box judders, the dish gremlins gurgle in their plastic house, a distant faucet drips as a river gone dry, wheeled monsters with bright eyes roll past with noises like masticating gravel, snowflakes drop with a serenity of mind, and the wind nibbles softly at the trees.
I stare up toward the stars betwixt the slats of the blinds, past the condensation on the glass, through the window and the screen and the branches of the trees - there are no stars, tonight. A night without moon, only clouds invisible and mute, like the house on this night of nights. But I imagine the stars: lions, old ladies, and bears, sitting and fighting and chasing their tails. How can all those animals fit? I asked. Won't the bear and the lion, the wolf and orion, the fox and the lynx, the dragon and the phoenix - won't they jostle and spar? The sky is so crowded with their lines and points.
Maybe they do, and some leave the sky for a season or two.
I dreamed that someone had come and replaced all our stars in the sky. I was immersed in a new universe with everything the same except the arrangement and names of the stars. They were named after the saints and fathers of Christendom: Paul who always points west, Peter, walking on the milky way water, Abraham, leading his son Isaac up the mountain, Israel staring up the ladder into heaven, Mary with her halo bright at the annunciation, and many more. No matter how they were explained to me, I was lost in a different sky beyond my understanding. I knew this world was beyond my ken, just because the stars were foreign - it was never meant for me.
But I awoke, and the stars fell in unique flakes to settle against the earth. They are not fire, as claimed, but ice, and soft as heaven's feather.