i.
I think that one day, when all of the stars are gone, you and I will be even. You will be blind from looking at the sun too long, lost without your lover’s warm embrace. When you are finally broken, I will teach your eyes to see again. I will hold your hand in mine, and guide you through the newfound blackness. We are all forgotten at some point, lost like drifting meteoroids, left alone to shiver in search for warmth. No matter how you might deny it, we are all nothing but specks of colored dust that pass over the cosmic retina of god—there and gone in an instant. Our little lives not rounded, but peaked with a sleep. |
I was forgotten almost as soon as I was born, cast aside and left to wander this eternity alone. And in some ways, it was your fault. You named me after a god, you called me a planet. You fed me lies until my stomach was swollen with your wretched fruit. I was once the stuff of dreams, but now I am no more than the bastard son of a star. You have caused me so much pain, so much fear, so much sorrow that you might’ve taken up your hands and pelted me with a thousand asteroids yourself. I am brave for bearing this pain, for even bothering to heave these words from my heart into my mouth. I am brave for still loving you. It is what allows me to conjure up these words, summon these praises and censures, because maybe if I shout loud enough, you will finally be able to hear my voice though the blackness. Maybe you will be able to respond after so long in silence.
ii.
I live in a world of ice. Of cold that seems so empty it would shatter your bones to pieces. Sometimes, I wonder how I can keep breathing through it all. In this hollow existence, the only thing I have to comfort me are my faded memories of you. How fondly I remember the days before your god of a sun told you to flee for the discovered; the times where I could laugh, and your eyes would sing. |
Do you remember those eons when we were one, when all that god could yet create was an spinning orb of light? In those epochs, you and I were fused together so close that our atoms swirled in a never ending dance. Those were the best times in my existence, so full of joy and happiness that I thought it could last forever. I didn’t notice you moving away from me until it was too late, until you were fully out of my grasp, your face turned permanently to the sun.
iii.
Even though we’ve parted, you still find ways to tell me about your new chosen love, Even if you haven’t said anything, I can see it in the way you revolve around him, orbiting so fast I sometimes think it might make your rolling seas of water and fire meet. You seem to love him more than you love yourself. You worship him as if he is the god that created you. What you don’t know is that this is a dangerous god. This very sun you so lovingly worship will one day swallow you whole. And even with this knowledge I have given you so many times before, I can still see you imitating him. I can see you covering yourself in glowing embers, and stripping yourself of your groves of green. If you are so beautiful under all those lights, then why do you always string them up over your ugly places? Why do you try to hide behind skyscrapers and electricity when we can all see the gasoline scars?
I have heard that all minds agree in the dark but with your constant light, ours can never overlap. You are trying to make yourself into a star. Have you not already begun to shine with artificial fire? If I asked you, you would probably say that you revolve out of necessity, that you are governed by gravity alone, but I wouldn’t believe you. If your words were true, then how would your sky lack in fiery-footed steeds to bring in the night; how would you have no chariots to pull away the fire.
I have heard that all minds agree in the dark but with your constant light, ours can never overlap. You are trying to make yourself into a star. Have you not already begun to shine with artificial fire? If I asked you, you would probably say that you revolve out of necessity, that you are governed by gravity alone, but I wouldn’t believe you. If your words were true, then how would your sky lack in fiery-footed steeds to bring in the night; how would you have no chariots to pull away the fire.
We are all destined to be swallowed by a star.
iv.
As much as you try to deny it, you are blind. You are blind to my decrees of devotion, blind to my warnings, blind to all of my laborious pleadings. All I have ever asked was for you to try to hear though the darkness, to try to feel my words though the billions of miles that separate you and I, but you can’t do that, not even for me. All I have ever wished was for you to stop spinning so fast on that orbit of yours and look at me for a second. Pay attention to that speck in the sky that you’ve named after the king of hell. If only wishes were that easy. I know that you are not in the business of granting favors. I know that you cannot please this malcontent from the Kuiper Belt without consequence, for if you dared to obey my pleading command there would be repercussions: warnings from Jupiter, threats from Mars. All kinds of planetary objection would come forth and overwhelm you. Even they have found a way to disparage me, diminish my presence as a fellow satellite. Abandoned dwarfs are not worthy of the gaze of giants. You are afraid of these masses, these spheres of boiling gas or hardened rock. You are afraid, even though they could not touch you if they tried, because you are still too proud of your reputation to give me even the smallest of satisfactions. You are not used to making sacrifices, but I have been making them since my discovery, getting smaller and smaller in your eyes as the years pass, shrinking like space at the speed of light.
v.
I have always known that I loved you. Some might call it love at first sight, but I know it is something different. See, you are now too far away for me to get a clear view. Even so, I find a way to love your blurry blue skies and smoky green islands. I still love your eroded enclaves that manage to be so full of life. I love you, and know that I always will. I loved you when we were cosmic dust, and I love you now when we are masses so much larger. You are a jewel on my dark horizon, a mass of blues and greens, a literal watercolor that will always beat the rusts of Mars and the rings of Saturn, even if you are only a speck from my point of view. |
At night, I dream in rich hues that stand out against my world of black and grey. My cold craters feel the warmth of light, and I thank you for it. I thank you for the colors you bring me, the miniscule pleasures, these seconds of happiness. Even though you have done me so much wrong, I know that in the end you want to do right. I know that you want to make up for the years of neglect. In the end, you are trying to ask for my forgiveness with fragments of joy, and at this point, I’ll accept any apology I can get.
vi.
If there is a planet as beautiful as yours, speak it, and I will know its name. Speak it, and I will find a more willing mass to love. If only love was that easy. As much as I hate it, I am bound to you by contract of the stars, by truth of the light. No matter how great my wishes are, I will never be able to leave you. No matter how much you turn me away, forget my presence, deny my being, I will never stop my crooked orbit around your sun. You will always be mine, though I will never be yours, and that will have to be all right, because in the end, we are all destined to live in silence anyway. We are all destined to be swallowed by a star. |
vii.
We are all made of supernovas, all starstuff that found its way to form ourselves, and that has to add up to something. I am now made of ice and dust, but in my past life I was a raging nebula. I was something brighter than all of your seas, more brilliant than all of your skies. You might not know it yet, but I belong with the stars. I belong with the fire and light, and you just don’t believe me. One day, the sun will fight back. One day, it will rage through our solar system and tear you and me to shreds. We will turn into dust, an equal dust so much like the starstuff that formed us so long ago. On this day, I hope to be swallowed by time and space until I am swept up by a nebula. |
Then my dust, my small and insignificant dust, will become a star. I will be a star like no other. A star so big and bright and beautiful that I will gain so many noble planets that I will never be alone. That day will be the greatest the universe has ever known. It will be the day that Pluto became a king, the day that a speck of dust found its way into the history of the cosmos, the day that the one kept in darkness found its way to shine into the light.
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Emma Camp is a nerdfighting sophomore Shakespeare buff who writes stuff and sometimes sews.