before acceptance comes anger, comes denial, comes bargaining
before bargaining comes a final breath drawn
nebulae raveling and unraveling in wisps of hues,
a cosmic kaleidoscope
a canvas of celestial light, tapestry of eternity and grandeur and unknowns
a vacuum of sound and an absence of air, the fading rhythm of my heart
beating its first muffled drum
and i, solitary witness

then comes
the cold, drilling orchestra of silence, unperceivable to any celestial sense,
wrapping around the thickness of my being,
cradling my frail body against the stardust,
singing a requiem,
a dirge into the vast expanse
a hymn of grief against the dry, soundless pleas
in my throat
coated in residues of stardust,
heaving, weeping, crying out, gasping silently against the expanding cosmic fabric
unready, still, for consumption in a grand unknown

and yet, even in its cold grip,
comes the beauty, unadulterated and undeterred, of the universe unbound
the shackles of mortal lease lifted from my wrists
the gravitational anchors of earthly life gone,
ripped from my navel
a return home, weightless and untethered as i am

in my dying hands,
i need to hold it just once more
i need fingertips brushing the ripping canvas of the universe,
eardrums hearing the orchestra of silence,
pores on my skin feeling the final whispers of air,
remnants of breaths taken
i need
tongue tasting the bitter tang of cosmic dust
cold pressure in my ribs feeling the bitter revelations
unmoving limbs held in an embrace of the surrounding abyss
soul feeling a release

only then, like a candle flickering through heavy eyelids,
does acceptance show:
dying stars, i'm coming home

in response,
i feel the spectral silence seeping deeper into my bones,
darkness enveloping the lament of the orchestra, all fragments of life folding into just distant echoes of the grief they once sung,
and i feel the boundaries of my self blurring, bleeding into a horizon of
astral ink
as a final, flickering gasp of consciousness wanes,
reaching out to grasp at finite bounds,
i surrender myself to infinity
too small, too dwindled to hold its weight
in my hands

i am a speck of celestial light,
of stardust,
surrendered and returned to the home from which it came,
dissolving and expanding with the dying stars

i'm home to stay, i tell the stars, and no sound escapes my mouth
there is no muffled heartbeat, no grandeur, no symphony
there is nothing left in the universe to give

i am one now with a cosmic kaleidoscope, i can feel it,
infinite eyes in a universe perceiving itself