Where the Earth Ends

We are small. We have always known this, though we spend our lives building walls to pretend otherwise. To stand in the dark is to be reminded of the scale of things. The stars do not care for our names or our histories. They burn in a silence so vast it makes the breath catch in the throat. There is a comfort in this indifference. When the world is stripped of its color and its noise, when the horizon disappears into the ink of the night, we are finally allowed to be nothing at all. We look up, not to find answers, but to lose the weight of our own questions. The cold air bites, the ground is hard, and the distance between the soil and the infinite is suddenly, terrifyingly thin. What remains when the light is taken away?

Shirren Lim has captured this silence in the image titled Vertical Horizon. It reminds me that we are merely guests beneath a much older sky. Does the darkness feel heavier or lighter to you?