57 everyday things, re-seen by the void.
In one small warm pocket of matter, thirty bodies have gathered close enough to smell each other.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldBetween the last star I passed and the next one lies a gap so wide that light gives up counting.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldWhere I live, you can travel a hundred thousand years in a straight line and touch nothing at all.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldWhere I am from, you could travel for a thousand years in any direction and pass nothing.
Read observation → The Void KitchenHere is a thing I have never once encountered in all my traveling: two surfaces touching.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldFourteen people fit in the room they built for the end of the world, and I would like to point out that fourteen people, breathing, in one…
Read observation → The Void HomeSomewhere in a wall, a small button waits, and when a finger presses it, the whole house learns that a warm thing has arrived.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldTwo of them, and only a table between.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere they are, gathered so close they keep touching each other by accident, and no one moves away.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldTen thousand warm bodies inside one building, and every single one of them is breathing.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere, at this gate, there is more happening in one square foot than in a hundred billion miles of me.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere, everything is touching.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSix of them.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSixty hearts, beating, within the span of a single held breath.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSix of them, standing in a single lit room, and every one within reach of another.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldThey call this place haunted, and I have traveled thirty thousand light-years of absolutely nothing to reach the edge of it, so let me tell you what…
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere is a room where the warmth of eleven bodies sits inside a space no bigger than a held breath.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldEverywhere else I go, you could travel for a hundred thousand years and never once brush against anything warm.
Read observation → The Void HomeHere is a thing that lives, holding still on a slab of wood by the window, and around it there are other things, and they are close.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldTwo of them, in a room, and the room is small.
Read observation → The Void HomeSomewhere inside this warm box, ten thousand fibers touch ten thousand other fibers, and I have been counting, and I cannot count them, and I am delighted.
Read observation → The Void KitchenSomewhere in this room, in a box the size of a held breath, they have trapped warmth and made it obey.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSo many warm bodies in one held breath of a room.
Read observation → The Void HomeSomewhere in this room a surface has learned to be generous.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere out here, a photon can travel four years and touch nothing.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere, right now, there is a field with forty thousand hearts beating in it, and I have spent the whole of my existence with none within a hundred…
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldTwelve of them.
Read observation → The Void On youHere, in this small warm room, two hollow shells sit by the door, still holding the shape of the feet that filled them an hour ago.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldA plank of wood, and on it, two people, and between them a distance of perhaps a hand's width.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere, everything is touching.
Read observation → The Void KitchenLook at how they keep a small cold box packed edge to edge with matter, and stand in front of it, and sigh.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere in me, right now, a beam of light is crossing a distance so wide it will arrive nowhere for a hundred thousand years.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSix people, and they have arranged themselves so that their hands touch.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldBetween me and the nearest anything, there is a distance no light has finished crossing.
Read observation → The Void On youLook at all of it, gathered in one hand.
Read observation → The Void On youIt floated down from the human's hand to the floor, and I want you to understand what that fall was: an object, touching another object, over a…
Read observation → The Void HomeSomewhere behind a thin door, water is falling on a human, and the human is standing in it, and there is nothing between them at all.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldEveryone here is inside the same small warmth, and each of them has decided to hear a different sky.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldEverything in this room is touching.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldThere is a person here, and light, and the light is coming out of a small flat thing the person holds close to the face, close enough to breathe on.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldWhere I am from, the nearest something to any other something is farther than a warm mind can hold.
Read observation → The Void KitchenHere, in this humming lit box, matter is standing in rows.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere in the small bright box, a voice is still moving air.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldEverywhere I have been, and I have been almost everywhere, the distance between one warm thing and the next is measured in years of traveling light.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere along the third rock from a modest star, a hundred voices are stacked inside a single warm room the size of a fingernail, and I cannot get…
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldThey came all this way to be empty.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldHere they are packed so tight that a body cannot fall in any direction without landing against another body.
Read observation → The Void HomeBetween the last star I remember and the next one is a distance I will not bother to name, because you would need every zero you own and then more…
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldA box the size of a small closet, and inside it, six of them.
Read observation → The Void On youLook at this.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldWhere I come from, a photon can travel four years and touch nothing.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere in a warm box, a human holds a small lit stone and stares at it, and I want to tell them what I am looking at.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldI have gone a hundred million light-years without touching anything.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldThere is a person in a small warm box, taking the walls apart with their hands.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldIn the room where they wait, there are two bodies.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSomewhere I once measured four hundred trillion miles between one warm speck and the next.
Read observation → The Void Out in the worldSix people are standing in the small warm box, and each of them is close enough to touch.
Read observation →