Copyright © 2014 B. Jean Carr
“Become nothing.”
“What? Why would I do that?”
“Because I said so.”
“And I do everything you say?”
“No.”
“Then you’d better come up with a better reason to be nothing.”
“If you are nothing then you can become anything.”
“Well that leaves a lot undecided. How do I know what to become after settling to be nothing.”
“I never said to settle with being nothing. I just said to become nothing…”
“And there’s a difference?”
“There’s a difference between everything.”
“That’s called variety.”
“Nothing has variety.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the exact opposite. Nothing is nothing, there is nothing to have difference, nothing to have similarity to something else. It’s just nothing.”
“But nothing becomes something.”
“I have no idea where you’re going with this.”
“Neither do I.”
“But you started it.”
“I was hoping you’d finish it.”
“Why do I always have to finish everything?”
“Because you were always smarter than me.”
“Oh was I? Really now?”
“… Yeah…”
“Hey…”
“What?”
“Become nothing.”
He smiles, “Why?”
She turns onto her side, looking away from the stars filling the sky above to gaze at his face on his right side. “See all those stars.”
His eyes flicker to her and then back up to the sky again. The night is pitch black except for those sparkling holes in the sky and the moon shining a crescent kiss upon the land. “I see them, but the view is better elsewhere.”
She smirks at his flirting but puts a finger to the side of his face gently to keep him looking up. “Look at them, how beautiful they are. What are they?”
He has to pause. “Um… gas, heat and pressure?” He never really paid attention in science class.
She never paid attention either. “So far away they all look the same.”
“A few are brighter than the others,” He muses, just to prove her wrong.
“Shut it,” She scolds, smacking his shoulder lightly. “They’re all the same from here, and you’re right, they’re also all different. They’ve got different sizes, colors, brightness… Where are they?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s it. A vast pit of darkness, nothingness, holding everything that could be something, but they might as well be nothing. We can’t touch them, half the time they’re completely invisible to us because we’re blinded by other light. Only in quiet places, calm places like this, are they completely undisturbed and clear. We can see every one of those stars from one horizon to the next… and suddenly they’re not nothing. They’re beautiful…”
