Still I See Stars

My chest implodes and my rib cage rattles as it expands beyond my arm’s reach, I cannot catch them. The sound of stretched and torn bone is lost in the sonic boom that surrounds a sequence of timeless moments. I am deaf.

The spaces between my bones are veiled and transparent like a baptized bride.

There is no colour, just light. Pure, clear, colourless light which fills the space around and through me. I am pierced with this light.

My eyes are polished pearls. I hate pearls, but in the right untainted light you can see universes and galaxies. These eyes of mine have been stunned open and will not shut. I cannot rest again.

My hair has become roots spreading like forest to crown my dazed mind; soft, pale roots. My crown moves slowly in the flood.

My lips are red and chewed. Soft lips like patted down pillows, they are soft, but they cannot break my fall.

The universe shifts and grows. Everything has slowed and I watch the stars pass in front of me. Some so close I can feel them caress my skin. They are hot. Others so far away that I can count them all in one big picture. There are billions.

This universe is only the gap of air which surrounds me; a cool embrace. The initial thrust into dark oblivion which we call birth had faded long ago into a light that now streams in fractured angles and layers me in silky veils.

I reach again and cannot catch my body so instead I aim for the light, trying to bend it to my will. I cannot move.

Sound is born again and my ears feel retired. I do not like the sound after hearing the nothing for so long. I want to go back, I beg send me back.

My pure and clear light begins to fade. Tainted by colours, red and blue. I am being pulled away. Out of my universe the air is cold, it does not fill my lungs gently.

I miss my veiled body and pearled eyes, I miss my forest crowns and being deaf with sound, I miss red lips and dazed minds, but still I see the stars. My reflection in them is loud.

Old and dull, bald and wrinkled, thin and worried, deaf without sound, and so extremely small, but still I see stars.

They watch at a distance so far above me, they are not the same. I look back at my galaxy flipped upside down. Smashed, and crashed, burning on wet solid ground. It calls me and I want to stay.

I can feel pain, but I don’t want to go away.