She is a Constellation

It began, as many beginnings do, with light. 

A blinding, burning flame. A spark, an explosion, the birth of a universe. A question posed with cosmic certainty - she already knows the answer - of who 

                                                                                                                     are 

                                                                                                                                    you? 

And you don’t know. 

You don’t know what you are. 

But you will. 

~~~

Where the beginning meets the end, there was a universe.

A constellation of everything that ever was and everything that ever will be; imagine it. Imagine everything always all together running at you faster than the speed of light, imagine eons in a moment, time nothing but putty in her hands, billions of lives and stories are simply a stalled blink, imagine her. There is nothing to say and there never will be anything to say, she is the final word. She has created time and she is time, a force so magnificent she surrounds suns, her trailing gown an array of astronomical anomalies.

She looks at the small man she has made. 

She is looking at you. 

She looks at you and you see stars swimming, you see a grandfather’s grandfather looking down, you see a baseball, a child, a mourning son, festivals and holidays and a humanity that doesn’t exist yet; you see everything. You feel like you are everything. 

Your mind might explode; 

how do you feel about this?

Your perception of time has crunched itself inward like an accordion, twisting, tumbling, turning you inside out and she is still looking at you. The universe is still looking at you. It’s a horrible predicament you’re in, really, because you can't find it in yourself to look away. How could you? She is the beginning and she is the end of every story you will ever write and every word you will ever utter, and so how do you cope with staring into a black hole as she stares back? Do you grasp desperately for the handlebar of her hip? Do you flail for the forgiveness of a creature you cannot comprehend?

You are beginning to fear that this will never end, that your mind, previously empty and now full, will slowly gravitate toward the inevitable nothingness that is her, her arms already encompassing you. You can nearly feel yourself splintering with the weight of a heavy world, the acquisition of the knowledge that you exist. The burden and the gift of the memory of deaths that came before you, the double edged sword of the awareness of being. How will you do this? When does this end?

She has given you 

                    consciousness.

She tires of staring; she has made you a world to play in. 

In what you perceive as an instant she blinks and you are hands-and-face down on earth and within the space of everything that has ever existed you have never been here. She looks at you, but you are not looking back. She folds her starry hands beneath her chin and perches delicately, waiting for you to discover what a wonderful thing you are, she applauds herself, smiling softly, you are wondrous. 

Your head is spinning and there are little ideas in your head that tell you so. You have spindly little things that can carry you forward and as you take your first steps she laughs with a jubilance that has never existed before and will never exist again, Saturn’s ring hanging from her heavy wrist like a bangle.

You ask in your jumbled mind, “Why, why have you given me this?”

She responds in the wind, a sprinkling of stardust.

“Everything is changing, my love. So must you.”

The corners of her lips tilt towards her nose as a comet streaks across her blushed cheeks. She holds you so gently. She kisses you sweetly through the sunlight and you have never felt a warmth this pure and beautiful. You have never truly f e l t before this moment. It might swallow you whole.

She has given you a piece of a god-mind, an awareness of the cosmos no creature could hold and that you might not be able to, either. You are the first being that has shown the thirst to be something more, something new, something greater. You are the very first being she has taken an eye to. The entirety of existing time she has gone without a being who could talk to her, tell her stories, befriend her and appreciate her for the work she has done. 

Now, you are here.

Now you are here to sway in her sunsets, to bathe in her beauty. Perspiration from the great effort of making all that is you creates oceans as sweat drips from her moon-laden brow. A wisp of a soft, stray hair churns into a brilliant storm on a nearby planet, red with a burning passion and adoration. She exhales stars through her mouth as she sighs peacefully, setting the sky alight with magic.

She tilts her head to the side, admiring you, and blinks; 

there are many more of you, now. 

You have discovered her trees, her fruit, her caves and creatures. You have discovered all that you can do with a mind such as yours. She watches you forage, farm, and with another blink she watches more of you invent things, sharpening her rocks into something entirely new. 

With time she wonders if you know she’s still looking at you. If your mind was enough that you could talk to her, if you will ever know what it is to speak, if you will live and die and never              care. She feels almost abandoned, and

                                                             then

                                                                 she 

                                                                    hears 

                                                                          you. 

She’s never heard your voice before. It is beautiful. It is magical and precious. 

You have given her a name, and it’s not hers, but it can be. You thank her for the work she has done with your hands clasped together, gazing at her sky. She allows tears of shooting stars to spill down her cheeks as they ripple through galaxies. 

She knows, now, that she is not alone anymore. 

~~~