by Connor Harding

A child lays flat on their back and watches the moon float gently atop an ocean of indigo twilight. The sun’s radiance still present in the moon’s pale blush, the constellations it’s only cosmic companionship, a lonely ivory droplet locked in place by an irresistible, invisible force. The child covers the moon with their thumb and begins to wonder what the world would look like from such a tiny, distant place. Budging their thumb just enough to reveal a gentle crescent, they imagine how tiring it must be, to twirl around a world at a fixed distance for such a long time— to be two bodies circling in orbit, destined to dance but never to touch.

 

An astronaut treads across the sea of tranquility alone, sunlight a distant glistening orb, its remnants reflecting off their suit and lunar rocks. Above them the earth shimmers, oceans a familiar hue of grey and blue, clouds swirling in variable formations like an atmospheric Rorschach test, the absence of light swallowing parts of it whole. Overtime, the astronaut begins to notice the earth changing positions in the sky. It seems smaller than before, and its slow slide into the horizon reminds them of a weight sinking into a shallow depth. As the earth vanishes behind the vast mounds of dust and stone and the sky becomes a spatter of stars against an empty blackness, for a moment, the astronaut forgets that they aren’t at the center of the universe.