your smile was bright and lit up the room like the sun.
even on the rainiest of days as long as i could make you smile the world always seemed bright and warm.
i was infatuated with you by means you could not and will not ever understand.
i chose seeing you over going to class.
i chose writing stupid poetry about you over sleep.
i chose waiting for you and loving YOU over learning to love myself.
i chose clinging onto lovely memories over forgetting how you hurt me.
but if there's one thing i didn't chose, it was loving you.
that's not something i could have ever chosen.
loving you isn't something you that's done by choice.
God no.
loving you is a dark trap that people fall into.
loving you is like the first rain of spring,
or the first layer of fall leaves scattered on the ground.
i didn't ask for it but by god it happened anyway.

months later here i am and I'm clinging onto this idea that somehow it was my fault.
maybe i wasn't open enough.
maybe i didn't text you back at the right pace.
but maybe all along it wasn't me.
it was you.

alnitak is the leftmost star in Orion's Belt.
it is located approximately 817 light years away.
that's 10,799,034,810,538,287 miles.

one day you asked me how much i loved you and i told you i loved you from here to alnitak, but you became puzzled and brushed me off.
as an astronomy major i live for the stars.
i love them.
each one is unique.
as a side effect, i often times find myself comparing people to stars, writing their bodies as constellations, their tongues as asteroid belts.
but with you it was different. you weren't just a constellation to me.

GN-z11 is the oldest and most distant known galaxy in the observable universe.
even with all that competition, you still somehow, made yourself to be the largest thing i could fathom. your arms wrapped around me like overgrown tree branches reaching up to hold the night sky in place. i felt warm in your grasp.
if a meteor decided to fall from the sky it was okay, because as long as i could keep you, the entire world could burn for all i care.

Stars run on hydrogen fuel. When stars fuse hydrogen into helium, they burn, releasing heat and light. when they run out of helium, they begin to expand and explode, causing them to become a red giant.

when you stopped loving me, i ran out of helium. i began to explode.
my inner thoughts and feelings of regret blasted around inside me at light speeds, looking for a source of fuel. but you were my fuel and you were nowhere to be found.
i turned into a red giant.
after you left,
all my eyes ever saw was red.
i saw red in the happy couples on the subway.
in the lady who brings muffins to lecture on Thursday nights.
even in my mother when she asked how my life was going.

after becoming a red nova, a star cools to a white dwarf, and a black. when a large star dies, it has so much mass that after the helium is used up, it still has enough carbon to fuse it into heavy elements like iron. When the core turns to iron, it no longer burns. The star’s gravity causes it to collapse, and then it explodes into a supernova. What’s left of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole.

and that's what you left me.
we were a bright glimmering star that illuminated the eyes of people around the globe. but we're nothing now.
nothing can compare to the way you made me light up.
now I'm a black hole.
I'm hungry for you.
i hunger for you.
i crave you.