Was reading about the nature of the universe on Wikipedia. The size of the observable universe in particular. And then came a list of supervoids followed by the time it takes for light to reach us from those distant galaxies I always bang on about. It got me so overwhelmed that at one point I had to stop and light a cigarette and think of your smile just to steady myself. It’s the perfect smile. The right mix of seduction and sincerity, and it helps ward off the impending threat of black holes and pulsars, which is even better. Just thinking of those billions upon billions of light years makes me go all giddy. It reminds me of being a child, and of the time my dad bought me a telescope. There was a time whenever he picked up a pack of smokes- Embassy Filters if you must know– that he’d get these coupons inside, and when he saved enough of them up, he’d treat my mum and me to whatever we wanted from this catalogue full of pretty much anything you could imagine. So I asked for this small, red telescope. God knows what happened to it, but every night after school I would sit on the windowsill in my bedroom looking up at the stars. Couldn’t see very far. It was a cheap telescope after all, but that’s not the point. The night sky fascinated me. All of those mysteries. Those distant suns. I was told they were already dead, and I was seeing them as they used to be. It was a scary thought. Still is. Time will outlive me, and things will move on, and yet for a few brief moments, I will have dreamed and given myself to strange visions. Visions built around a curious girl who just so happened to walk into my life on a day like any other. Such beauty and loss. Such random little happenings in a universe destined to flow forever more.
A Journal for Damned Lovers UK
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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