I found a polaroid picture of the galaxy once. In the bottom of a lake. 

While swimming in the cold waters of a Minnisotian lake, a white shimmer caught my eye. There were lots of twisting weeds and green plants at the bottom of the lake, like a whole garden. It was tricky to focus on one thing. But there it was, resting upon a cement-filled tire, half buried in the sand. Watching from above the water, I held my breath and dove under. I picked up the white square placed on the tire, and flipped it around in my hands. A smudge of black smeared the base, but that was just through the blurry haze of underwaterness. I knew there was more to it. As I swam back up to the surface, I noticed the fish below stopping their drift to stare. They saw me swimming at the top like we see clouds drifting in the sky. There, from their little underwater garden, they see a shadow of a great cloud-not a cloud-a giant being. Who journeys the depths of the sea, but only for moments, before disappearing into the sky once again. 

Breaching the surface, and coming upon land, I sat down on the nearest rock to admire my treasure. Smooth, it was. Perfect little rectangle, ‘cept a small chunk chipped off from the top right corner. It felt plastic, had a familiarity to it, almost like a piece of an old stove top. But the black smudge in the middle was almost identical to something I’d seen before. Something there is every night, but only visible if you are in the clearest of air up north. A nebulae dust cloud. A galaxy. The picture faded from a dark blue, to black, to an orange blob at the bottom, the cloud in the universe. A nebula. There was a small circular star looking thing near the left side, similar to the ringed planet Saturn surrounded by meteors. There was a man-made hole in the top of the frame, as if it could be hung up. I studied the oddity in my ringed hand, wondering about the origin of this heavenly piece. How would you take a polaroid of the galaxy this close up, and get it back in time to shake it up and see your picture? 

The closer you looked, the more stars you could see. The more glowing, shifting, twinkling, dust clouds. In my mind, I know it is just a piece of a broken stove, but in my soul, I know it is also a piece of the universe. As we all are, as everything is. This is a trapped picture of space. The vast expanding universe, with all it holds. And zoomed back to earth, left at the bottom of a lake. 

A polaroid of the galaxy. 

From the sky, to the sea, to land. From the universe, to a lake, to my hands.