Slowly, he turns the page of his book using a pencil positioned in his mouth. Outside, in this August afternoon, touchdowns are made to win championships with scores written in dust. In the closed-in room of medicine smell where there never seems to be enough light, the boy struggles to keep his pencil from falling. His legs unmoving, his fingers unseen to him because they are dead, he again bites hard into the old teeth marks in wood. And the room dissolves, then the house.
Summer disappears into unimaginable cold and brilliance.
The boy walks on planets. He tunnels inside suns. The comets are his playmates, racing meteors a game. From the pages of his book on astronomy the boy gains knowledge of what is beyond, of what can happen when a body, though unmoving, holds a spirit willing to explore the stars.