Starlight Through Glass

A photon travels eight minutes to reach the lens of my eye—by then the star may have already died, collapsed into its own silence. I am always looking at ghosts.

The atmosphere bends light into scattered aureoles, softens the sharp corners of truth. We see what we want to see: meaning in patterns, intention in the blind machinery of physics.

But standing here, neck craned toward indifference, I feel small in the only way that matters— released from the tyranny of significance, freed to notice how my breath becomes visible, becomes sky.