From a Pitch to a Planet

By Anna Yanosick

I climb into a rocket ship; a student journalist turned astronaut for one hour. I soar through clouds of nebula and watch massive stars collapse from supernova explosions. The hot glow of Venus warms my ears and injects my heart with the hazy heat of neutron stars and galactic nuclei. I play hopscotch on Jupiter’s moons and collect constellations from the cosmos.

I am at the Griffin Planetarium; a speck of humankind sitting on a cushioned seat. The projection is over, and my gaze shifts from a bare ceiling dome to the ground. Gravity is no longer gone, and I am a mere girl learning my way in the world— no, the universe. I now know how small I really am.