At this moment, I am inventing the dinosaur; creating toast; conceiving an end to a circle. Against reason, I am endeavoring to produce something beautiful from the dregs of humanity.

You told me that if you could withstand the immense grasping pull of a black hole and stood on its surface, time would stand still. Stand still. Stand still. Potential. In waiting space. And the entirety of eternity – ethereal, terrestrial, cerebral, apocalyptic and new – would unfold; a lotus of uncertainty. You told me you could see the strings of what if intertwined in space. Singularity. Gravity. Propulsion. Chaos. To stand on the pinnacle of a pin at the balance point of no return. Glorious.

And cold. Space is cold. All space. Absent of heat, of presence, of essence.  Frigid. And still. This is what is considered creation.

The crime I stand trial for is humanity. Is for laying each and every one of my nerves out to sizzle in the sun. Is for keeping my heart in my chest, unmarred by scissors or scalpel or hammer or chisel or spade. Is for leaving my brain rampant, tangled, synaptic, consequential, neurotic and wild. Is for daring to believe that love is more than a noun, a verb, a hyperbolic exclamation. The crime I stand trial for is labeled and stamped and sealed.

I kept the light in my eyes.

Eye contact truly is dead. I see it.

Most cannot hold it – they flicker, falter, fumble.

They crumble like a Styrofoam plate. They close in – a degenerating photonegative. And when they wash their hands of the Earth they still cannot even face their own shadows.

And so this is why I am taken hostage by my passion.

This is why I am singing lullabies to unborn children.

This is why I am freezing speeding freight trains with the tip of my finger.

This is why I am the architect of opaque transparency.

This is why I am.

I do not ask for forgiveness.

I ask only for a mirror.

And that you stand in front of it and say honestly that you can hold your own gaze without shrinking at the sight of your own exposure.

I do not ask for forgiveness.

I stand mirrored.

Potential.

In waiting space.

And it is at times like this that I imagine that my frame is made not of bones but light.

That if I shattered I would still shine.