via lattea

Via Lattea 

by Jessica Abel 

(ca. 1995, and greatly diminished without her illustrations)

Do you know what the Milky Way is?

The galaxy is a great spinning disk, and we are inside the disc, and the Milky Way is what it looks like from the inside, edge on.

Some people look up and feel insignificant.  I choose to look up and feel a part of something huge.

Do you ever feel, in the summer, a night like a balm, like a kiss, like a soft velvet cape about your shoulders? 

A night that feels like nothing can be bad?  

A night that, despite its softness, feels like an adrenaline shot in your veins?

A night that feels like it belongs to an alternate-universe-you who lives a much happier life?

It's some sort of alchemy of heat and dark and stagelights, or streetlights, or starlight, that turns the leaden night into gold, 
                  
... and makes your heart stand in your throat.  You have to be in it, now, because you can't save it.  

It is fleeting.