The rocking of the boat by the waves was soothing but unknown. The men on the shore were asleep. Not the twelve-year-old, though. He shifted and lay on his back and decided to look up at the sky. What he saw took him by surprise. He was basically a city kid. He had never really seen the night sky for what it is. As he stared up at millions of stars, he was filled with a dread he had never known before.I was just a boy, I said to my wife in a hotel room in Cornwall. I was just a boy on a boat in the universe.
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland
dread, night-sky, solitude, universe