The Universe is Unraveling

  The waves of death compassed me

  I saw a bright light at the end of the tunnel—

  The tunnel is more than a pipe in the ground,

  creeping under wizened roots and interstate paint

  and the grass Joseph steamrolls on balmy Saturdays.

  The light winking at the end of it is not a casual

  department store light bulb or the jellyfish ooze

  of a lava lamp. Is not as simple as the sun

  or as distant as fragments of star. I’ve heard it told

  many ways. Some approach the light

  like skydivers, bombing toward the king of bright

  and crown of suns, eyes stretched wide as the planets

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  and stars streak like paint, brushing over the canvas

  of the universe. Others hike upward, using constellations

  for walking sticks, wiping dark matter off their brows

  as they work off the gloom and aim for the

  center. For those with ears to hear, the light is pulsing

  with the musica universalis, nimble music of the spheres,

  a portal to emotional wealth and mental prowess. Some

  say the dark is blotted like ink, a well spilling

  onto the snow-white page of infinite healing and power.

  It could be the center of the universe, God’s heart,

  and we shoot like cells toward the source of life,

  riding the purple strand of God’s own DNA.

  She said she was a fleck of dust, called upward

  to the absence of darkness. He swore the tunnel flared

  with rainbow rings of dazzling light, colors expertly mixed

  by God’s steady hand. The children speak of angels

  and the glow of a million bulbs.

  Like birth, we are swept from the dark into the light,

  falling into arms of pure radiance.