Stardust
What can you do when your body is afire?
When tendrils of white hot flame wrap around each finger,
creep up each toe,
race up your neck.
An agony, ecstasy of ravenous destruction.
What can you do when lightening surges through your skin,
a flip switched on a faulty electric chair.
The soles of your feet, the flesh of your arm, the meat of your calves, the calloused pads of the palms of your hands.
Buzzing with the hum of a hundred wrathful bees.
What can you do when you ache.
Ache.
Ache.
In your chest, a throbbing cage of ribs.
And elbows, and knees.
Wrists, shoulders, feet.
Where bone meets bone.
Will they crumble or explode? Either ends in slivers of bone.
Dust.
Can dust feel pain?
What can you do?
Rage. Weep. Scream.
Quietly. Inside. Don’t forget to smile.
Ignore. Ignore?
Distract. Keep moving.
Or, be still.
Breathe. Hold your breath. Exhale.
Exist. Persist. Prevail.
Pretend.
Hope. Accept. Hope.
Except this may be it.
Accept this may be it.
It. As good as It is going to get.
What can you do?
Create?
Are we not all made of dust?
Remnants of Stars, destroyed from within.
Broken beacons in the dark.
So much beauty from brokenness.
Perhaps these bones,
battered into dust,
into sand,
through fire can become
molten.
Shaped into something new.
Gleaming with light stolen from a shattered star.
