there are infinite universes,
you tell me,
sipping on coffee and smiling
in that hungry-teeth way that makes me think
maybe last night you battled demons and are
still recovering
you say that each of our nightmares
are glimpses into another reality because
with infinity, everything that could be,
is
and somewhere in those words is a
hollow note like a greedy thirst like
you maybe saw your own death and
now you’re jealous of the version of you
which actually achieved it
and i don’t know much but i do know
that we’re in the universe where monkeys
evolved to write hamlet and maybe that
doesn’t mean anything to you but
i do know that they pointed a telescope
out to the black nothingness
beyond our moon
and after four years, that glass eye
picked up evidence of tens of thousands
of undiscovered places where
love and peace and good coffee might
all exist like there might be life out there
in all that blackness
i do know that we look at the moons in
our life and think that we are the darkness
beside it, we think that we will never shine
like our best friends or we’ll never be
our mom’s favorite or we’ll
never actually succeed at anything
but four years is a long time and four years ago
i was nothing but a black hole and i still
pointed my soul in the direction of my darkness
and said “find the light within”
and after four years of staring i’ve seen
such wonderful and terrifying things and
not all of it has been easy and not all of it
has been fun but good lord the possibilities
i’ve found tucked away inside of myself
are so endless and extraordinary that i cannot contain
the joy of it all because yes,
i could focus on the coldness of space,
but i’d rather think about
the brilliant warmth of the stars
because i can't think of anything more beautiful
than hurting deep and still
loving who you are
and i know that you haven’t even
found the strength to look directly at the mirror
but good lord do me a favor and
look up and look deeper
because we are all tiny contained universes
and instead of wishing you had been born as one
where your fingers were strong and your teeth
never broke on self-hating words and instead of
staring at the moon and thinking that
you will never know how to glow like she does
hold your universe close and wear enough sweaters
to keep out the coldness
of space and
tell yourself that this is your home and that
even in the darkest places
you will find your stars
if you just wait.
For my friend who asked me to write about the universe. // r.i.d