Hello, my name is Universe,
but I have gone by many names.
Whether they call me cosmos,
outer-space, the abyss, …
or love, … it is all the same to me.

By “they,” I mean the voices in me
of course, with lives all their own.
I suppose I’m a bit schizophrenic,
but isn’t everyone? We all live
with the voices within us.

They don’t often think of me, even as they go
about their existence within my vastness,
yet I’m very self- and/or other-aware,
and I know them all;
every hope, dream, … and fear.

I have fears of my own you know.
“But how?” you may ask,
as every frightening thing is already in me,
as if that weren’t scary enough.
Yet something is even more daunting.

That’s right… space is afraid of time.
That wing’d chariot haunts me everywhere,
I know no corner of myself outside of time.
You could say it’s my second half, and what’s scarier than the ‘you’ - you don’t know?

I’m fourteen going on forty… billion.
During my life I’ve done a lot,
I’ve painted nebulas and lit stars ablaze,
but most moments are spent thinking,
and boy I’ve thought, and thought, and thought.

Some call my birth the beginning,
but who really knows or cares about beginnings.
I’m more concerned with endings,
and in true Universe fashion, I like endings
to go out with a BANG.

And yet… that’s not how things always work.
Some deaths are hot in name only,
and even for someone as old as me,
some endings last way, way too long…
like the pain of a light fading and flickering out.

But I digress, because even after so many
have gone out, I still love every burning candle,
and sometimes I mourn the ashes of a flame
that only lived to light the darkness,
and draw constellations across the sable sea.

My end is destined to be the same.
An eternity will seem like a moment,
and all I hold will become but a dull glow,
and I’ll be left alone with time,
both weary and old- dying together.

After that… I don’t know,
I guess there is no after… or where.
My name is Universe,
and I’m just like everyone else,
afraid of the uncertainty of death.