Library Stars

I was in an old library, surrounded by dark wooden bookshelves. (Picture a place like the college libraries in Trinity, or Johns Hopkins.) The celling was high above me. The books on the higher shelves were impossible to reach without a ladder.

In the aisles all around me were stars the size of pinheads. I could walk through them and touch them. They were merely a representation of the cosmos, a starmap with no context for being here.

I focused on a single spot. I saw a gas giant planet like Jupiter suspended in the air. It's bands were grey and black. It was so small, I thought about how I could have held the whole planet between my index finger and thumb.