Taking the Vast Thing In

Sometimes as an antidote to fear of death, I eat the stars.

Fear asks us to stand apart from what is vast. Eating is the opposite gesture: taking the vast in, letting it become bone and breath. You are already made of old light; the calcium in your wrist was forged long before your name. This morning, attention might be that small: a slow mouthful of bread, a full exhale, the plain astonishment that something so large agrees to live inside something so brief.