Everything I Hold Dear Is Taken From Me

I went to the shoreline that night to witness the planets align — a rare, celestial moment where distant bodies briefly share the same visual plane. I was too late. The sky was already dark and vast, the alignment gone, leaving only a quiet scatter of stars and a faint turquoise glow hanging over the horizon. The city lights flickered in the distance like something terrestrial trying to compete with the cosmos. That’s when I found the crucifix. It stood alone in the sand and rocks — handmade, rough, imperfect. Two pieces of weathered wood bound together, planted upright at the edge of land and sea. It wasn’t ornamental. It wasn’t polished. It felt placed with intention, but without spectacle. A marker. A memory. A prayer. A warning. I don’t know which. In the freezing wind, I pulled on my astronaut suit. The suit is meant for survival in inhospitable environments — airless, silent, infinite. But that night, the earth itself felt just as alien. The rocks were jagged and cold beneath my knees. The ocean air cut through everything. My breath was loud inside the helmet. I knelt not in outer space, but on a Massachusetts shoreline under a sky that had already performed its miracle without me. The crucifix beside me shifted the meaning of the scene entirely. Astronauts are symbols of progress, science, exploration, ambition. A crucifix is a symbol of surrender, sacrifice, faith, suffering, devotion. One represents reaching outward into the unknown; the other represents looking inward and upward simultaneously. Placing my astronaut body beside that wooden cross created a collision — technology kneeling beside belief, future kneeling beside antiquity, human advancement kneeling beside human vulnerability. I had come looking for alignment in the sky. Instead, I found it in the landscape. The act of kneeling wasn’t theatrical. It felt instinctive. In that moment, I wasn’t conquering space or chasing spectacle. I was small. The missed alignment became part of the symbolism — the idea that we often arrive late to the miracles we plan for, yet stumble upon quieter, more personal revelations. The planets may not have lined up for me visually, but something else did: earth and sky, science and spirit, isolation and presence. The astronaut suit, usually a symbol of escape, became something different. It turned into a barrier — a reminder that even when fully protected, I am still fragile. The helmet reflects the horizon lights, blurring the boundary between cosmos and city. I am sealed inside my own world while kneeling in another. The suit protects me from imagined cosmic danger, yet offers no protection from existential questions. The crucifix, planted in sand and rock, suggests permanence in a shifting environment. The tide will rise. The seasons will change. The planets will move out of alignment again. But for that night, under that freezing sky, it stood steady. And I chose to kneel beside it — not necessarily in religious submission, but in acknowledgment of scale. Of time. Of mystery. I missed the astronomical event. Instead, I created my own moment of alignment-mbetween body and landscape, faith and science, searching and surrender.