The Weight of Everything
2020
At what point did you stop
seeing the world in rose?
When did you start noticing the cracks,
seeing every fissure in the future,
and why did you still run straight ahead?
You say we need to fix everything;
you want to clear the earth’s lungs,
sealing all its smoke in a jar.
You want to trap the sunlight
so children won’t be scared of the night.
You want to stitch cities back together
and catch the sky if it falls.
At what point did your heart
become strong enough to bleed for others?
Adamant carbon heart,
brilliant, brittle, too big,
digging into the flesh past your ribcage.
Why did you let their tears flood your ears,
the cacophony of everything at once
keeping you up at night?
At what point did you decide
you couldn’t stand it anymore?
You told me you wanted to make a change;
a single particle trying to vibrate fast enough
to make waves in the universe’s sea.
The temperature’s rising but
you hate that nothing’s happening.
At some point I started to fear
the darkness that would come
when your fire burned out.
I know the world is waiting for you,
but I promise you still have tomorrow,
so just stay put. I’ll create a place
only for us, where you can forget
about the shadows waiting outside.
We can be a molecule of our own,
comforted by our weight of nothing.
And if at some point the world still ends,
I’ll sit with you, and keep your hand safe in mine.
We can watch the universe burn together,
just two atoms waiting to return to stars.
And I’ll tell you
that you did your best,
and I’m just happy you’re here.
At some point I noticed
that the world spins faster
than we can run.
It’s selfish, but I’ll keep you
next to me, so you don’t lose your way
where I can’t follow.The world isn’t ending yet, so
let’s stop here, and for a while
we can forget about being anything.