Thrum

by Meg Smitherman

Space, of course, is bigger than anyone comprehends, bigger than the human mind can handle. We’re able to come to some understanding of it with mathematics, and philosophy, and even art. We can look at pictures, read comparisons, and conduct complex equations to try to make sense of it. But the fact is that the biological makeup of a human brain is too simple, its neurons too few, to understand the true enormity of our universe. It is incalculably and emphatically beyond us. Thank God for that.

I’m drifting half out of the ship, half in, but even then it feels as if the infinite universe is reaching for me with inexorable fingers, with hands made of whorls of starlight, of depthless lightless chasms that hum like monsters of the cosmos. The air in my lungs feels like a dare. I’m challenging the firmament in its horrible power, and it is gazing right back at me, unimpressed.