The Pleiades are an asterism of baby stars, hot blue luminous baby stars, only about 100 million years old, suspended in the northwestern portion of the constellation Taurus. I always get Taurus and Aries mixed up because they both have horns and sit adjacent on the Zodiac. My sister was an Aries, and the Pleiades are known as ‘the Seven Sisters,’ but I only had one sister, Jodi, who was also relatively young and blue and burning hot when black matter was discovered in her large intestine that altered her from Aries to Cancer. 

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The Pleiades are also known as the ‘Messier 45.’ French astronomer Charles Messier was only interested in discovering comets, but he compiled a list of 110 other astronomical objects that came to be known as the ‘Messier objects,’ cosmic castoffs that vexed his comet searching. Jodi died on 11/10 at 10:10 am, even though I thought it would be 1/10, because that’s the date her best friend died a few years earlier. Death comes when Death wants to, though. I wish she could come back again, like a comet, a brief visit to light up my world. Or, that like the Pleiades, I could at least see her in the distance, bright and winking. She’s a baby star frozen in time, forever young, never to evolve into the human equivalent of whatever a white dwarf or red giant might be. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a premature supernova, but that’s one of many ways I would describe her death.

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French is not my native tongue. ‘Messier 45’ pronounced incorrectly in my English speaking mind is evocative of disaster. Cancer is a messy thing that often gets Messier. I am almost 45 years old. I have eclipsed the ages that my mom and sister were when they died, the deceased women that left black holes in my nuclear family, gaping crevasses, feminine voids.

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The Pleiades are an estimated 444 light years from Earth, one of the closest star clusters to our tiny blue planet. Jodi was born in the 4th month of the Gregorian calendar. She was stage 4 when she was diagnosed. I am currently 44 for 4 more days. 444 light years is an unfathomable distance for something considered so close, the same sort of distance I feel from Jodi, now. Separated by space and time she might as well be a flint of comic dust sifting around the outer corners of my known universe, but sometimes she’s so near all I have to do is inhale and I know that it was a shared breath, my exhalation a mix of stardust and sublime shattered things.

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Reflection nebulae, clouds of interstellar dust that can reflect the light of nearby stars, surround the Pleiades. The latin word nebula translates to ‘cloud’ or ‘mist,’ and the associated ‘nebulous’ is an adjective utilized to describe something as being vague and cloudy. Cancer diagnoses and the state in which cancer patients and families exist are nebulous. I am grateful to reflection nebulae for sending offerings of light back in our direction, tiny scintillations of hope. I don’t do so well with nebulous things, no one does. When you shake a Magic 8 Ball and the purple triangle toggles to the window and gives a “REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN” you shake that thing so violently tiny bubbles froth inside and flank the outer edges of the next reply, leaving you to wonder about the ferocity of your incertitude. 

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In ancient Druid culture, people believed that the veil dividing the living from the dead is most thin when the Pleiades reach their highest point in the midnight sky, a day that coincides with modern day Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. Are my sister and I near or far? Together or separated or one of the same? The center of Taurus’ eye in the night sky is a star called Aldebaran, an Arabic word meaning ‘follower,’ as this star is said to always be following the Pleiades. Am I Aldebaran, forever chasing my sister through the cosmos? Or perhaps I have misinterpreted my orientation entirely. The Pleiades are sibling stars, gravitationally bound and drifting through space together. I am not the follower or the Earthbound observer. I am Maia, Electra, Alcyone, Tygete, Asterope and Celaeno. I am looking for Merope, The Lost Sister, the star that cannot always be seen. I know she is there, even though her luminosity may sometimes suggest otherwise, so in this orientation we remain, together but apart, hurtling through the universe in uncertain celestial tandem.