Her back porch was desolate with nothing but a love seat that was deteriorating in the weather. "Watch out. The black hold will eat you," she said referring to the couch as we sat down.
"I like living furniture," I said with a laugh. And this was the thing, she wasn't afraid of being wrong but she never wanted to be out of step, to be thrown out of orbit.
"The whole universe is alive," she said.
We sat and talked and smoked with one blue light scarcely shining down on us. She finished her cigarette and threw it down on the ground. The concrete floor, illuminated with a faint blue tint, was speckled with her white cigarette butts. "You're killing the earth," I said joking about her "everything's alive" statement.
"No," she said and paused for so long I thought she had no explanation. If she wasn't afraid of being wrong, she was afraid of doing anything without purpose and reason. "I'm creating my own universe. See my constellations?" She pointed to a group of white cigarette butts on a blue background. "That there, that's Orion. And there, the big dipper."
"All your stars have died out," I said.
"Yes, in that way, it's a projection of what's to come. But there's always new stars being added."
"The universe is expanding."
"My universe is expanding. And we're just flying through trying to understand it."
