Small specks of lights glisten. So much darkness between. I look out at the lights…the traveling lights are old and weary. They are a map of what was. My eyes feel blistered by my staring. What am I looking for? Hope in the midst of my darkness? Yes, I am, but what will I find? My life is brief and growing briefer still with each breath I take. If I play dot to dot with all these specks of moving light, I can create a face…each dot connected could form the face of my mother. Mother…she was my light. She was the one who lit my darkness with hope. She was home…and now she is gone. I cannot find her among these stars and yet for some reason I feel like she is there among them and here within me. Is this foolishness?

The telescope brings so much close that is distant. If only its lens could bring what is beyond the edges of the universe into view. Do universes have edges like the rims of of our oceans? So many questions. I’ve always had too many. When I was a child my mother would say to me, “Aurora, let your brain rest.” My brain has learned to rest, my heart has not. It is my heart that keeps me seeking, keeps me asking questions, keeps me searching for what I once held so easily. Sometimes as I study this view I wonder, if my mother’s light still travels. Starlight still shines after stars stop producing light. I wonder, will my mother’s light travel through me? Will it travel after me? What about my own light? How do I find it? Who can I share it with? I want to shine too. I believe I can.