Letter to the Cosmos

Dear Space, I know you're mostly nothing. Ninety-nine point nine percent of you is empty— just distance wearing a costume of darkness. But what a costume. You hang the stars like someone who decorates alone and overdoes it— too many lights, too much glitter, but somehow it works because the room is infinite. We sent you a record once. Gold. Vinyl. Beethovens Fifth and a whale song and the word "hello" in fifty-five languages. We launched it into the dark like a message in a bottle thrown into an ocean that has no shore. That's either the most hopeful thing we've ever done or the loneliest. Light takes eight minutes to reach us from the sun. Which means we never see the present— only the past, arriving late, still warm. The moon has no atmosphere. No wind. The footprints from 1969 are still there— perfect, undisturbed, waiting for someone to walk beside them. And the pale blue dot— that's us. Everyone who ever lived, every war, every kiss, every poem written at 3 AM— all of it on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Dear Space, we are small. But we looked up. We always looked up. And that has to count for something.