Shards of Stars

it's a small world

JANUARY 4TH, 2016
"it's a small world"

♬

I cannot even picture a world that I am not a part of
I cannot even imagine a time in which the machine that withholds me falls apart and I too with it
I cannot fathom my cells exploding in a million tons of volcanic ash or floating down the Amazon River or resting on the tip of someone's silver spoon, when I am one of the dead and forgotten

I cannot picture a world in which I cannot stare down at the ends of my toes and definitely say, "Yes, I am alive," or fidget with my hands simply because I can, because I am physical and want to double check that fact every
second of every day, want to make sure that I'm still here, my heart thumps on, my breaths flow on, the system has not failed me yet and no red flags arise, that "it's okay" and "you've got many years ahead of you" when the truth is my thumping red vessel could just quit in the dead of the night, could just come to a stuttering stop and my breaths could become ragged and my eyelids could hitch and I would never know-

And the honest to god truth is that I see it every day, every day I live in a wide world where the people around me cannot double-check their physicality, cannot twirl the ends of their hair until it snaps, can no longer laugh or breathe or cry or scream or just exist, can no longer place their palm on their skinny wrists and tap their feet along to a pulse that feels deep, bass-like, something inside that was than richer than their tiny plastic bobble-head

And the honest to god truth was that it never bothered me, the sight of a dead man with red satin ribbon loose around his body like a gory Christmas present made me quiver, sure, but it was only because I didn't want to meet the same untimely fate myself, I didn't want to lie in a body bag at a morgue like a moldy loaf of bread

And the honest to god truth is that mini parts of me are dying every day, inside me there is a microscopic world where tiny cells can no longer float down a twisting blood vein, or form a secretive smile because they know something no one else does, or embody the words I write now on the tips of my fingers, poised, ready, or pound the surface of the earth into a flat pancake with every hammering step I take

The dead cells, the hairs, the pieces of skin, they're hurling into space at the speed of light, a premature spaceship you could crush between your index finger and thumb, something you could blow away with a puff of air like solar winds, or fluster around like a nebula with a wave of your arms, or send into destruction like a Big Bang with the swipe of a dust cloth

I have yet to decide whether the cells are afraid- they are approaching the great unknown of vastness, they are so small, irrelevant as a piece of dust, as irrelevant as their identities,
and they have nothing to lose, they're already dead, for goodness sake, they knew this end was coming, they knew that they were born with the diagnosis of terminal disease on their birth certificate but no guaranteed time,
time, that was the one thing they never had enough of, no amount of tick-tock could suffocate the silence enough to make it insufferable, and the worst was that the time could stop at any second, their breaths could become ragged and their eyelids could hitch and they would never know-

But they knew the end was coming, they were warned, they knew that everyone was going, no-one was immortal with a headband of leaves tucked behind their ears or an eggshell robe draped over their shoulders- heck, even the divine were going, even they too would be sucked back into oblivion, so why did the cells have to insist on being quite so hesitant, so cowardly?

Maybe the reason the cells, the tiny building blocks that are all that we are, could not face a microscopic universe in which they could not laugh or breathe or cry or scream or exist was because they were from us

Maybe the reason they could not "go gentle into that good night", no matter how  golden-gate guarded and heavenly or hoarded by the hounds of hell it was, the only thing they cared about was that it was change

Maybe the reason I write poetry about the cinemas of cells instead of the hopeless of humanity is because it's a distraction from the inevitable

Maybe the only reason there is a believed hand in the sky and a lush place where we can all be distributed time is because it's a sugarcoat for the inevitable

Maybe we are the cells.
Maybe the universe is us.
Maybe it's a smaller world than we thought.

♬

____________________

✿ "I HAVE, AS IT WERE, A SUN AND MOON AND STARS, AND A LITTLE WORLD ALL TO MYSELF."
- HENRY DAVID THOREAU ✿

___________________

hey / whats up / hello
sorry for not updating recently, unfortunately i don't think the whole daily updates concept will work, but i do still plan to update pretty regularly.
this is a pretty personal poem that has not been edited whatsoever so it's probably shaky but oh well. next update will be less depressing, i promise
thanks for reading + please vote if you enjoyed! :)
- payton.