I am a star, shining bright in the night. I guide travelers and wanderers, handing out all my light. I help and I save and I glow and I give. And I hold in the pain, ‘cause I’ve got to outlive.I try brushing the stray stardust off of my shoulder. Work in vain to compress all the hurt right back in. I ignore when my heart starts to simmer and smolder. But the darkest destruction, it comes from within.

Lifetimes later it starts to go wrong. People frantically calculate numbers. All announce that I haven’t got long. Soon I’m pulled in by unwanted slumbers. How can nothing be destroyed, if everything must end. Panic creeps in and gnaws at my soul. How can we keep moving on, if time doesn’t really mend. Now it’s too much, I’ve lost all control.

A curtain of blinding light captures me. I feel nothing and everything at once. It’s over and I have ended and I have not been destroyed, but I am no longer here. My world has been shattered. Slowly worn out, then ripped at the seams.

I am a supernova, crying out in the night.

And then deafeningly silent peace. Before me I see two paths split up. One bad and one worse. Choose the chess piece. I could curdle, rust, rot, shrivel up, and grow black. Forever destroying, luring innocent curiosity into my pit of pain. I could kill others’ light, because mine didn’t last. I could change who I am, because I’ve wrongly assumed that I’m already gone.

I could be a black hole, stealing everyone’s night.

Or, I could just ... be broken. I could hope. I could live in pain and regret, but live nonetheless. I could accept that the damage has been done, and I’ve lost my way. Because if there’s no black hole, nothing to suck out all the light, then there are stars. There are stars to guide me back home.

Things will be different, for I have been changed. Not for better, nor worse, but for life to take its course. For things to come and go, but going isn’t gone, because nothing’s ever gone. Because I am not gone. Because I am still here.

I am beaten and broken and battered and bruised. I am fragile and fractured and fragmented too. I’ve lost my energy and now the cold seeps in. I’ve lost my heat and yet the hope will still win. I might fade out eventually. But you never know. I just might find someone else. Someone broken and fractured like me.

And if courses collide and if time’s on our side, then you might just set me free. I could be a neutron star, believing in the night. I should be a neutron star, believing in the night.

I am a neutron star, colliding into light.