I. The stars do not speak. They burn. And that is enough.
Each one— a wound in the dark spilling ancient light. Light that left before your name had shape, before blood remembered time.
You see it now. The shimmer, the echo of what was. Not the flame, but its ghost.
II. You are small. You know this. But you are also here. Thinking. Witnessing.
You breathe, and breath becomes a kind of answer to a question you were never asked.
To be alive— not as triumph, but as miracle without audience.
III. Somewhere, light is still leaving. Somewhere, it is always leaving. You stretch a hand, and stars remain— untouched, indifferent, magnificent.
You are not meant to hold them. Only to watch. And in watching, to know that watching is rare.
The stars do not see you. But you see them. And in that, perhaps, there is enough.
IV. In the end, there will be no fire. No scream. No last war.
Only quiet— a long, unraveling hush as heat forgets to move, and time stops asking questions.
The stars will go. One by one, they will dim and fall inward, folding their stories into silence.
Even the black holes will sigh themselves away— slowly leaking out their secrets in final, listless breaths of radiation.
V. What remains? Not gods. Not names. Not us.
Just light. Thin. Tired. Scattered like dust across the infinite.
But still—light. Still reaching.
And if there is no eye to see it, no mind to name it— was it all for nothing?
No. For we were. We wondered. We loved.
And if nothing remains but memory written in particles that no longer speak— then let it be known:
for a while, in one corner of the dark, something saw beauty, and did not look away.
