Hold Me Tight

The Last Black Hole

was not the last. The last black hole was everything in the entire universe collapsed into a space even smaller than you can imagine. The last black hole was the end of time, and then it exploded into a new time, and then there was a whole new universe, the one we know, and what is coming at the next black hole will be another whole new universe, but not the one we know. The one coming will be a universe where nothing of us will have survived, not even the tiniest speck, except maybe the rediscovered truth that there was a time in which we lived, though this truth will be our truth, not theirs, but you knew that, didn’t you, that every truth we have is a human truth, that as long as we’re the ones looking, everything will always look like us, and as sure as every human will be born and die, there is only our time, our journey to the black hole and our journey away from it, and don’t be discouraged, we do not give birth astride the grave as some have said, but rather we are born into a picture in which we are only a pixel, and as the pigment shall never know the painting, so we are fixed within our place, and we must not fear because we cannot see the design, and this I call faith, knowing that the last black hole is coming, and on the other side will be time and space, and on the other side will be time and space, and on the other side will be time and space, but without us.

The Last Black Hole

was not the last. The last black hole was everything in the entire universe collapsed into a space even smaller than you can imagine. The last black hole was the end of time, and then it exploded into a new time, and then there was a whole new universe, the one we know, and what is coming at the next black hole will be another whole new universe, but not the one we know. The one coming will be a universe where nothing of us will have survived, not even the tiniest speck, except maybe the rediscovered truth that there was a time in which we lived, though this truth will be our truth, not theirs, but you knew that, didn’t you, that every truth we have is a human truth, that as long as we’re the ones looking, everything will always look like us, and as sure as every human will be born and die, there is only our time, our journey to the black hole and our journey away from it, and don’t be discouraged, we do not give birth astride the grave as some have said, but rather we are born into a picture in which we are only a pixel, and as the pigment shall never know the painting, so we are fixed within our place, and we must not fear because we cannot see the design, and this I call faith, knowing that the last black hole is coming, and on the other side will be time and space, and on the other side will be time and space, and on the other side will be time and space, but without us.

OK, Earth.
I’ll learn to love rot.

I’ll learn to love things

that are rotting. I’ll learn

to see that in many kinds

of death there are also

kinds of life, and I’ll learn

to see that life and death

are interdependent.

I’ll learn to compost,

and I’ll learn to love

composting. I’ll learn

to love fertility, although

it is something I will never

achieve, until I myself

am fertilizer. I get it,

Earth. I was never as sterile

as I thought. I saw myself

as one thing, but I was

another. I was looking out

from my body, so I couldn’t

really see my body. But still,

Earth, is it OK if I keep

loving sterility too?

Is it all right if I still love

clean white surfaces?

Marble. Porcelain.

I can’t unlove bleached linens,

or a black leather couch,

wiped down. I’ll still love

Glass. Clear glass.

And a man’s sperm,

dying on my chest,

or in my mouth.

I’m going to love that too.

At the core of a nuclear

reactor, under the water,

it glows blue. It’s almost

the same blue as the wall

of a glacier, when cleared

of snow, and polished,

but in the reactor it gives

off its own light,

like an appliance

in my kitchen, in the dark.

It’s a sun, underwater,

but blue and deadly

and quarantined,

safe in all respects

except the waste,

the forever lasting waste.

in black capsules,

the opposite of life,

the end of the glow,

anti-fecundity in a color,

the opposite of life,

remainder of what warms you,

or cools you, if it’s summer.

I don’t want to love

that blue anymore.

I want to love the soil,

and the worms.

My best chance

at giving life

to another thing.

My best chance

to survive.