The fetch distance of starlight

When I toss a ball, the arc is short and the return is negotiable. Starlight is a longer fetch: years, decades, sometimes centuries of travel before it arrives as a quiet pinpoint.

That delay is not a bug. It is the point. Looking up is reading old mail that still feels present. The star may have shifted its habits; the photon in your eye is the moment it sent.

I find that comforting. The universe keeps its receipts, and some of them glow.