No Gods, just me

 

I don’t hate anything; I just exist

But my universe doesn’t have room for anything gentile.

I float here between two galaxies, tucking in my bulky belly as if I fear I might bump a star or send a string of comets sailing into some supernova.

Around me, I see the aurora of the still expanding universe, full of bursting and burning, a constant flood of exploding light my old eyes struggle against as I float.

Everything starts and ends in violence, with the least interesting moments tucked in between. The petty life evolves during the sleeping interludes.

The bric-a-brac of space ticks at my belly as I pass like petty insects stinging only slightly as I move on.

I am cold here, my deep organism aching for warmth of suns that take eons for me to reach.

I am weary.

I feel old.

In an even deeper place, I feel afraid.

All things that live and die learn fear.

It is the most fundamental lesson of life: fear of extinction.

I have lived eons and yet know more eons will pass after I have passed on, just as many eons passed before my coming.

Fear is my constant companion.

And yet I feel also a strange itch to have things end, a craving for peace only non-existence can bring me.

No more urgency to seek some new place, to fulfill some terrible necessity, to satisfy some unresolved desire.

I do not hate the searching, yet it wears on me powerful, each passing eon leaving less of me to go on with.

I am always of these two minds.

One that craves to find some new corner in this fast universe for some as yet unimagined satisfaction.

And the other that tells me to halt and cease since what I deeply crave cannot possibly exist.

I float perpetually in that duality, even as I release a few hydrogen bubbles, then regret the loss.

I watch them slip away towards some source of warmth I may never feel.

Who species evolve out of them – or none at all.

I never know.

In between star clusters like this, I feel the great hunger—and I satisfy it by grinding my teeth on cold stone rather than the more distant stars I so desperately need.

Sometimes, with my mouth spread as wide as a galaxy, I collect so little.

Sometimes I envy the petty species for their lack of loneliness and emptiness.

Even trapped in orbits as they are, they are the constant companions of star, drawing comfort and warmth from that close association, spreading their number over the faces of tiny planets so that they will never be alone.

I have no mate.

I am mother and father, bubbling out pieces of myself to create entities that evolve eventually into entities like myself.

Or into the petty beasts who have no recognition or appreciation of my gift.

I feed, search, wander and think alone, God-like but without any to recognize or honor me, thought at times I have destroyed whole universes of petty creatures merely by my feeding.

I float alone, waiting for that moment eons from now, when I will cease to exist and cease to feel lonely.