They say that some of the stars that we see overhead aren’t really there. Their light takes millions of years to reach us, and all we are doing is looking into the past, into a bygone moment when those stars could still shine.

“So what does a star do after it quits shining?” I ask myself. “Maybe it dies.”

“Oh, no,” a voice in my head says. “A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life.”