The Weight of Light

A thousand stars, held in the palm of a hand.

We gather in the dark to prove we are not alone. We raise our small, artificial suns, hoping to catch a flicker of something larger than our own pulse. It is a strange ritual. To reach toward a stage, toward a sound, toward a stranger’s back. We are trying to map the distance between one heartbeat and another.

But the light is cold. It does not warm the skin. It only marks the space where a person used to be, before they became part of the collective hum. We are all reaching. We are all signaling.

What happens when the music stops and the screens go black? Does the darkness feel heavier then? Or is it finally, mercifully, quiet?

José J. Rivera-Negrón has captured this collective reaching in his image titled Hands in the Air. It is a study of how we seek connection in the vast, crowded dark. Do you see yourself among them?