Simran Orion

When The Night Dust Settles By: Simran Orion

A fact you may or may not know: humans are celestial. Through the marrows of our bones, through the water fearing layers of our cells, through the electrical signals jumping from Ranvier’s nodes - we are the remains of tremendous supernovian explosions in the sky. Stardust. And we are not alone in this phenomenon. A star dies and the contents of its soul disperse across the galaxy. Sparks of carbon cascade into the soil that builds mountains, and into the leaves that release oxygen. Fallen bits from the brightest light shows in the universe vitalize the ocean, the rain, the dew on early spring mornings.

Time quickens and humans play with numbers, words. Transitive property states that A=B=C. A girl lays on a lawn and considers the strings that tie Man’s laws to the universe. Transitive. If humans are made up of stardust and stardust luminates the oceans, we... are that life vitalizing substance that envirgorates the globe.

Heights and depths and the known unknown. A girl peers into a murky abyss and wonders why humans love to poison themselves. Ignorance contaminates waves with each spill. Careless (but convenient!) shipments of deadly polymers trek through the marine, leaving behind a trail of sludge. We continue! Listen! Hide our minds! Stir together the ingredients of destruction and sicken our bodies. Parasites lie in the bed we make, plotting to poison thirsty souls sipping at the stream. The water today tastes irony - with the fact that the fluid for life condemns us to death. The ocean no longer glitters in the sun. Neither do we. Once celestial beings in a crystalline world, now crippled by the toxins and curses we pour into the water. What happened to the stardust? Still there… still existing… but that once iridescent shine barely glimmers as centuries of human negligence extinguish the light.