The Quiet Between Stars
written by: Himani Usha Tripathi
There is a place beneath your ribs
where silence pulses louder than noise,
where the hum of your being
meets the breath of the universe—
not in a temple,
not in a sermon,
but in the way a candle stays lit
even when the room collapses.
You could sit at a café,
cracked ceramic mug in hand,
steam curling upward like a question
you forgot how to ask—
and there it is:
that unspeaking presence
in the spaces between sips,
in the pause before your next thought.
The inner self isn’t a locked door.
It is a mirror of constellations,
a sky folded inward,
waiting for you to remember
that you were never just flesh.
You are the tide and the pull,
the hush of snowfall before it lands,
the root system that knows how to hold
even when the storm forgets your name.
People talk about being unshakable
as if it is about strength.
But strength is brittle.
What they mean—what they need—
is alignment.
The kind that happens when
you walk into morning light
and it doesn’t matter
that yesterday you wept on the kitchen floor.
You’ve seen a tree stand alone
on a winter hillside—
no leaves, no fanfare,
just bark and bone and knowing.
That’s what it’s like:
to be plugged into the current
of something older than language.
To stop pretending the stars
are far away.
The universe doesn’t shout.
It nods.
It presses its hand to your chest
each time you pause long enough
to hear yourself returning.
And when the ground cracks,
when people leave,
when the news makes you forget
what peace feels like—
you will still rise.
Not because nothing touches you.
But because everything does,
and you know now
you are part of it all.
Every grief,
every joy,
every breath taken
without needing to understand.
- The Quiet Between Stars - June 25, 2025
