The sky beneath
 

The sun set long ago but she’s still bent over her desk, examining the thousands of stars and galaxies preserved in the photographic plate, like insects in amber.

Sixty-four percent of the galaxies on this plate can be classified as spirals, the rest are ellipticals. This is normal. She writes this down in her notebook and continues looking

When she glances up away from the plate, she keeps the eyeglass attached to her eye and the room dashes across her vision. It’s enormous and empty without him.

Countless times she used to stare at him, all magnified so that she could see even the faintest markings on his skin.

She tried to make contact with him, but he was too distant. Only his surface properties could be known. The freckles on his face became a deep joy to her.

But he left the observatory, even though he hadn’t completed his work. Now she can only see him playing Sunday football on the green, moving too quickly for her to focus on, or through the windows of his flat, where he’s blurred by the thick glass.
 
She picks at the emulsion on the plate, scoring through it with her thumbnail, making a ragged line appear across the sky. Soon she’s scraped off a small galaxy. If she keeps going, this plate’ll be clear by the end of the night.



* Pippa Goldschmidt is a writer in residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy & Research Forum, at the University of Edinburgh. She used to be a professional astronomer and has an M.Litt in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. She blogs on literature and science at www.pippagoldschmidt.blogspot.com