The Loveliest Girl - by Aimee Nolte

Spending afternoons together, a string of days with perfect weather, far too nice to stay inside.

Lying in the grass I looked up at him sitting next to me. He said the light was casting shadows under my nose.

The sun was running his fingers through my hair to make it glow. And I looked at him, and said I wanted to know what he was thinking about. So he told me this story...

I was born in the center of the sun. The product of a nuclear reaction. All the other sunbeams, we were all the same. Preparing ourselves, for the long and lonely journey into space.

I expected I would die 100 years from now, on the dark side of a desolate moon with nobody around. Imagine my surprise, when I went into her eyes, and down her nose, across her lips, across her toes, across her hips, and she was so...beautiful.

She was so...beautiful. But of all the light the sun gives off every second of the day, why was I lucky enough to fall upon the face of the loveliest girl?