A Perhaps Weekly Pandemic Periodical, #7

There are few things which speak summer to my eyes and ears in these parts as much as lightning bugs, or fireflies, if you prefer, and cicadas.

Not a week ago, I stepped out one morning—because it is the only time to be outside—and I heard it: that telltale shiver through the treetops, and I knew that the cicadas had come out of their earthy hibernation and scaled the barks of how many different types of trees, and molted, and climbed further still to a nice, high perch, then proceeded to buzz the bejeezus out of their tymbals—a special organ that cicadas and other species of insect possess.

Letters to the Void, #1

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Firestorm_of_Star_Birth_in_Galaxy_Centaurus_A.jpg

Dear Void,

You are much fuller than people suspect upon first impression. I previously misunderstood just how vibrant your vast emptiness actually was. Instead of limitless vacuum out there in the universe, there are enormous bands of gas churning in and out of galaxies like breath. There are energies known and, assuredly, unknown. There is a dark, even the utter darkness in the pupil of a black hole, but that dark, while terrifying, is yet beautiful and magnificent. I wonder... are there not byways crisscrossing over that big black? Are there yet the jet-trails of those who have passed before?