that's the last time i watch the science channel before bed.
I don’t ever want to be different. I don’t ever want to be set apart.
I waking up screaming in the dead of night from dreams that the universe is ending. Everything, everything, everything is collapsing to a single point, height and width and depth and time all spiraling to the point of origin, (0,0,0,0), everything that is and has ever been and will ever be curling in on itself, uniting to one point, immeasurable, too small to exist.
I see suns and stars crash together, fold and compress, and I see the first mouth I ever tasted filled with moonrocks, spitting out the fire in the northern sky, burning and freezing and still there, every last molecule. I see kings and priests and poets and gods existing together in the space of a single cell, and then the space of a thought, an impossibility. I see parallel worlds where I am exactly the same, but with a freckle on my left wrist, a kinder voice, greener eyes, and worlds where I am someone’s delusion, someone’s hopeless daydream, worlds where no one has ever thought of me since the dawn of time. I see the spiral arms of galaxies, the dust of meteors and comet tails swirling, twisting, locking and dwindling. I see shrieking phantasms, ghosts and angels, the terrors of a hundred billion trillion sleepless nights, chewed up by the blackness and swallowed into the belly of infinity, just a theoretical place where everything I’ve ever seen, the bones and eyelashes and blue veins of every person I’ve ever loved exist simultaneously, perfect and whole. I see the end, and I stand on the precipice, on the outside, wailing, screaming, alone, alone, alone, trapped in the void, nothing but fear without form, without a mind, just consciousness floating, without remedy, stranded, kept apart from the rest of the universe because I don’t know how to be part of it.
And when the screaming stops, I lay back down, curl into the corners of my house, twist my fingers into the sheets, praying to gods I don't believe in, and try to feel the Earth spin beneath me, because when the universe does end, I want to be crushed, swallowed, sucked in, as well. I don’t want to be different. I don't want to be set apart.