When the Universe Looks Back

There's this thing that happens when I look at the moon.

It starts before the looking, actually. There's this feeling that comes first, rush of love, quiet and enormous, like greeting something that has always known you. I don't summon it. It just arrives, and I go still, just for a moment.

And then in that moment, once I'm there, something happens. The moon stops being a thing painted on the sky and becomes what it actually is. A ball of rock, hanging in space, tied to us. I can feel its weight somehow. I can read the light on its surface and sense where the sun must be sitting, just out of frame. The whole solar system arranges itself and I'm standing inside it, not looking at a picture of it.

It consumes me when it happens. That's the only word for it.

It's not like solving a puzzle. It's more like recognition. Like the universe is seeing itself through me, and for a moment I'm in on it. Like I belong to something so much bigger than my day, my worries, my little fortress here on Earth. Like I can actually breathe.

And then it passes. Life comes back in around the edges.

But something stays. Not a thought, not a lesson.

Just a smile I can't really explain.

Because when has love ever made sense to anybody, anytime?