A galaxy far away with twinkling dots of light
Blind us like the glare of the sun, so vicious it is
Stretching so far that the edges of the folds fade to black
And we lean forward with eyes squinted and mouths drenched
We think it belongs to us
This galaxy full of that rare and beautiful
Hope
A word we haven’t said in decades
Our mouths struggling to form the word and our voices rough from disuse
But that tastes like a drop of honey, sweet and soft
as it pools in our mouths
We find out that hope
spreads like poison, but it is the plunging knife that slowly twists in our flesh
Numbness settles in our bodies and our vision becomes blurry
But we grasp around blindly
Looking for something to hold on to
As we claim this galaxy as ours
That hope to escape this former paradise
that now spawns rivers of hellfire
Threatening to drown us all and cast us
Into that bottomless pit we so desperately try to climb out of
But for the stones shackled to our feet
Our minds still believe in the wings that erupt
Filling our souls until they turn to mush
Our eyes also are bound, filled with desires
That crowd our thoughts
And that come pouring out from our mouths
But we still plan and yearn without mercy, even for ourselves
To capture this galaxy
We say to ourselves
We will drag this galaxy back to us
Screaming and kicking it shall do
But our hands will readily scoop up the shallows of blood
Streaming out of the galaxy
Like the drop of blood that slowly falls undecidedly down an open wound
We cover our ears to the whistling shrieks that spew out
Bloody our hands and close our eyes
Because we have tasted
Hope
And now we cannot let go
Why I Wrote This Piece
This submission is part of the “Write to Discover” program. This piece was inspired by the vastness of outer space and my fascination with it; particularly it looks at the state Earth is in and how humans would react to another Earth-like planet.
