by Layne Holcomb

The first time I saw the night sky, I became addicted. Those pin pricks of light, so distant, always tempting me closer. The universe, a never ending fractal of dark and light, opened up to me as I learned about its beauty. 

Stars and planets; galaxies and black holes; trillions of nebulae at my fingertips; flares of color against great inky nothing. All of this, everything that can be, spread on a black canvas, heartbreakingly far apart, with hardly a stray atom between them. 

And so I learned the truth about such beauty: That it is made of mostly nothing.