You Left Me Between A Black Hole And A Supernova


The day you left, I began to read space theories. I read about why the earth goes around the sun, about the solar system slowly collapsing into itself, about black holes and supernovas. But the truth is, the more I read about the universe, the more they began to blend together into a pastiche of you, of me, of us. This isn’t about spirituality, understand. This isn’t about how ‘it wasn’t in the stars’ and ‘I wish I had loved you like the earth loves the sun’. I have already written those poems for you and the image of you walking away from a home that was once ours, helped me understand that there is no romance in the way a star collapses. It is ugly to watch a thing of beauty turn on itself.

The day you left, I learnt that some black holes roam at a nine hundred miles an hour searching for things to absorb into their abyss – entire planets like ours, entire solar systems have disappeared into their shark like mouths. And I found you shaped like a black hole the first night I had to sleep without you and tried to reach for you. It sucked me in, into its graveyard of stars leaving me there for no one to find. It took me three days to find my way back, to leave our bed, to call my mother back and try to explain where I have been. I lost her, as I would lose anyone between empty explanations of black holes and supernovas.

The day you left, I forgot how to write. I forgot the way it feels to feel my fingers wrap around a pen and pour emotions in black ink into a white abyss of nothingness – filling it with words so that it doesn’t seem so empty…so terrifyingly alone. Do you remember my fear of wide open blank spaces, both dark and light? You told me that blank white nothingness is what it feels like to be at the centre of a star just as it is falling apart. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I am there now, and I know you weren’t lying.

The day you left, I realised you were a rouge planet. That you didn’t orbit around anyone or anything. That you had no solar system and you found your way into mine, into my orbit, to stay with me just for a little while. I couldn’t keep you. You weren’t meant to be a part of me. Our love was like the sun, ninety-nine percent of this solar system, but not nearly enough to keep you. Some things are more beautiful because they don’t belong to anyone or anything. That is how I would like to remember you. As something too wild for me to keep, rather than a thing that threw the sun away.

The day you left, I read that the earth once upon a time may have had a second moon. That the moon we see today was created by the collision between the two. It helps me realise that sometimes, there is beauty in destruction. It helps me realise that sometimes the most beautiful things are built from accidents or collisions. And that is where I will leave our love. On an oasis between supernova and a black hole, a safe place lost between the two.