People
always describe their souls as gardens they tend to. My soul is a galaxy. A
vast empty space, an encompassing, harrowing darkness filled with every single
element in the universe. Every era of my life is a solar system. Friends and
family are planets, and every lover is a star, their luminosity dependent on
their distance from my system’s sun.
Some
burn with an unrivaled intensity, and some go supernova. These dying stars are
worth living for. The ones whose death I witnessed have taken a piece of me
with them. Their implosion took me by surprise. Their dissolution in dark
matter was poisonous, their disappearance paralyzing. But even they were, at
some point, gone.
Then
comes the black hole, whose gravity pulls at the core of my very entity. Its
darkness is palpable, yet within it I can see; a projected time machine
materializes the moment I step inside, and so I can witness past, present, and
future. I can kaleidoscopically glimpse a life within the confines of the most
massive, most beautiful, chaotic, chimeric vacuum of my existence. In it I am
free; blind, but free. Drowned, but free. Hauntingly asphyxiated, but free. In
it, I am what I most desire: mine first.