With the Sun more than 75% covered, it still felt like a bright sunny day; without my eclipse glasses, I wouldn’t have known anything unusual was going on. The Sun is bright enough to completely hide the Moon with its glow. Then, as we started to get closer to totality, it felt like a partly cloudy day, except it wasn’t that cloudy. Then, it felt like watching the world through sunglasses, except with no sunglasses on. Then the entire world around us looked like an underexposed photograph. The cicadas, thinking it was sunset, began to chirp loudly. The temperature got cooler.

And then, as we reached the moment of totality, the Sun didn’t get covered like a pot with the lid on it. Rather, it receded back into the sky, like a candle going out. When it reached the point of totality, there was completely different glow, like how I imagine the soul at the point of leaving the body. The sky above turned the darkest and deepest shade of blue I’d ever seen.

And there it was, a perfect circle of pure darkness encircled with a thin line of brightness that actually seemed to brighten right at the moment of totality. This whole entity was surrounded by the hazy corona scattering faint beams of light in infinite directions. The horizon was deep red, like dusk, but all around us on all sides. The whole world around us turned quiet.

I was quivering on the inside. I said a silent prayer. Everything stopped for two-and-half minutes.

And then, on the upper right edge of it, just as totality ended, there were faint streaks of bright violet, only for a few seconds. And then, a small beam of light emerged, one that quickly grew larger and just like that, the light returned, life returned, the heat of summer returned, the Moon moved on, time started again, and our Sun was back.