in a cosmically laughable accident,
he is born in disorder, created in discord
sent off in a journey he does not understand
but he is already on his way

he can’t stop spinning, unbalanced, unsteady
but there is a path they tell him to take, and
there is a destination he has to reach, and so
he must join the race

and when he tries to breathe like they ask him to,
he suffocates in his own atmosphere,
and everything that once lived within the wells
and dwelled within the rafters,
they had to leave.

but he knows he will never be as beautiful
as the ones who mark the darkness in their
unending pursuit, he will never be as swift,
he will never be angled right, he is too slow
and too small and too weak and

as he misses his entry into orbit,
he realises he never knew why he was born,
nor why he lived, nor why he was dying, but he
hopes that if they couldn’t notice a dying star,
perhaps they might at least remember its absence

and maybe, just maybe, they’d give him a name.