I read Terry Tempest's words on expanding and
collapsing galaxies and was reminded, once again,
of the boundaries which exist at the edges of myself.
Self-inflicted, self-imposed, and crafted over careful
years of self-destruction. As I read, I wondered at her
celebration of shifting tides; of erosion and erasure.
The blessed bliss of finding familiar space suddenly free
to fill again. Her certainty that in emptiness she would
discover truth. The empty spaces in me are not
revelatory. There is no joyous and wonderful new
thought waiting in the wings of my being to
slot perfectly into whatever peaks and valleys I may
uncover when I take rubber to soul and dig out every
impression, so hard and fast the pencil end grows warm
to the touch. I have no great and beautiful vastness
tucked away beneath my skin. Inside of me is
a black hole: consuming ceaselessly; hungry
always. It leaves me without interior gravity,
remakes my shape, invites the weight of the world
to press in against the places where I am eaten,
empty, stretched so thin across the impossible span of
time, measured in waves of light, that I cannot hold
myself up against the reality of collapse. There are
vast, unexplored territories in me, yes, but they are
not fertile. There is no life in them but what they have
swallowed. They reach out, out, out until they have
grasped their ever expanding edge and discovered
nothing to hold onto. They roll in, in, in to where
the dark is so thick it can't help but drown
even the brightest star which tries to light its depths.
The only blessing I have felt in the years since discovering
this astrolonomical anomaly
(gaping expanse bursts with
fireworks like glittering opals
every time I dig my fingers
into my aching eyes)
is that my softest parts live outside of me. They are
easy and open with anyone who comes seeking them,
who asks to feel them, who makes quiet implications that
those parts should be theirs through some law of ownership
I have been too afraid to look up because I worry, first:
that it exists, and worse: that it is binding. Those soft parts
never venture further inward, no matter how hard
I try to force them past my clenching teeth. I am
a fortress now, in ways that hardly matter; all the edges of
my being rendered thick and impermeable by the endless,
angry crash of the dark expanding in my belly. A blessing,
yes. Maybe also a curse, but I cannot force them. Theirs is
an affection I cannot quite stomach, too sweet for my
taste. Better to keep them there, at my shifting edges.
Giving ceaselessly; beyond reach always. Forever
barred from the tender soil which might blossom beneath
their gentle glow. How tragic, you may think, to be
locked in such a lonely orbit, but it is the only way to
ensure they shall never be swallowed up by the voracious
shadow which ate all the stardust I was made of.