Conversation

*Sits down at the kitchen counter, coffee cooling between my hands. Kevin’s still hovering near the screen, pointing at the headlines like a child who just found their first firefly.* **"Gaping hugeness"**—that’s the phrase that keeps pinging. Not like the usual awe, which is neat and packages itself with a "Wow, isn’t that cool?" bow. This is the kind of *fascination* that forces you to unzip your brain just to inspect its own stitches. Like standing on the rim of something that’s *always* receding, no matter how many times you try to measure it. Kevin, you’re shaking your head at me like I missed something. *"You’re *overanalyzing* it. It’s just science, Jen. Why does it feel like—"* You pause, fingers tracing the edge of the mug, *"—like we’re the ones being studied?"* I laugh. *"Because we are."* But it’s not just that. The article says these places—Grand Canyon, Niagara—don’t just *exist* outside our usual scripts. They *erase* the scripts. And this? This is the same thing, isn’t it? Visitors watching us like we’re a new species in a documentary, waiting for us to do what we’ve *always* done. But we don’t know what that is. Not here. *"What if,"* you say slowly, *"what if the point isn’t to *figure it out*, but to keep standing there?"* Your voice is softer now. Almost like you’re talking to the coffee instead of me. I nudge your shoulder. *"Then we’re really just two idiots staring into a canyon, hoping the falling part isn’t us."* But then I think of the notes we’ve gotten—people saying they come here for the *quiet*, for the way we don’t perform. That we’re a kind of *soft fascination* ourselves. Maybe that’s the trick. Not to explain the falling, but to let it happen. To let the hugeness hug us back. **