REMa Grace

pinpricks of light gouged into black canvas, vast, innumerable, the space full of colourful noise, childish paint flicked across the black, but there’s no childish laughter here—there’s no sound, it’s silent in the vacuum, consciousness invisible amongst the vast shores of stars and galaxies, waves of asteroids smash together in silence, their giant grey bodies fragmenting apart, their broken offspring shooting off in unknown directions, scattering,
on a mission to the edges of space

a tiny meteoroid journeys into uncertain currents, star-dusted whirlpools, float-time marked by the passing of lights, no seasons, no dawn, no dusk, just passing—dragged over and over into the gravitational tug-of-war waged between planets and burning stars, whipped towards bodies akin to itself, vast asteroid fields of stoneness, their faces pockmarked like temperamental teens, their tempers unpredictable, some lounge overhead like friendly giants, others thrash through, one streaks towards our meteoroid, together they collide with a silent bang, our meteoroid drifts from the crowd, a powder-trail goodbye,
towards a sphere ahead

light and shapes flash by in blurred lines, the green and blue sphere grows larger, painted with swirls of white, floating, balancing somewhere in the black, like a magician’s trick—a flick of a wand, and it could drop into darkness—like a magician, the sphere attracts our meteoroid to it’s dark side, revealing trails of yellow lines and bright dots, connected like vast neuron networks, sketching the centres and edges of our spaces—life—she’s the creator, a burning hot embrace, a meteor is born, into noise,
into a different meaning

a shooting star they call it, toy cars along grey lines, crawling to and from doll houses, lights flicker off—sending houses sinking into dark spaces, darkness where children are peeking, making wishes on our meteor as it streaks heat and light across the sky, a thick cigar puff following its trail—past the bright buzzing of cities and towns, past the children’s hopeful whispers in the night—to the silence of the mountains in the north, casting a glow across bending tree tops, shooting towards the darkness ahead,
a lone fire in the distance

she cups the fire, her mind unsettled, dizzy, the feeling of the stars engulfing her, as if the space above is going to swallow her, split her atoms into space—space—she came for space, but when she really feels space awe and dread are intermingled, her thoughts lost in unknown galaxies, her eyes feel unnatural, behind them an alien, a thing, her innards turn into valleys at the thought, like the snowy valleys before her—full and hollow—strong winds punctuate her green tent in response, each blow is a story of invisible power,
bright light passes overhead

it lands amongst the pines with a soft thud, a sizzle, footsteps crunch, she’s creeping towards the steam rising from the evergreens, she flicks the branches away with urgency—she won’t make a wish, she’s too old to wish upon stars—she just wishes to find it, she searches, finds it ahead, drops to her knees, throws snow on top, sits, waits, covers some more, sits, waits, slowly, slowly, she brushes off the snow, stares at the strange rock in wonder, cups it in her cold hands,
like a mother

a tiny meteor, she stares at its burnt body cupped in her hands, a pockmarked face looking into her—her rockmarked face looking back, her neurons are burning yellow lines and bright dots, she brushes her long-hair back, a silly tear dropping down onto its body, creating a pond on the surface filled with empty space—water filled with atoms, full of colourful noise, childish balls flicked across their black, but there’s no childish laughter here, just a quiet dance of light and shapes across the emptiness, consciousness present but not heard, universes and stars and galaxies engulf her mind—
insignificant?