part iii of heaven/not heaven (i have a crush on science)

At the corner mart when the friendly cashier asked what her name was, she told him Pince Nez. Then she walked to the top of a grassy hill, watched the sun set, dusk fall, then cool velvety night. And then she stood up, reached at the air above her and grabbed hold. The air didn't necessarily feel like a ladder or anything solid but she could climb it. She climbed, leaving behind the cicadas and crickets, then the moths, then the sight of roads and trees. After several hours she finally reached them: the stars. Climbing through a constellation was perhaps the best thing that could ever happen to a person, surpassed only by sitting in air, watching the death of one star and the birth of another. Thousands of years she sat there and it didn't matter because this was Heaven.