Some stars
Especially brilliant stars of great value
Luminous and radiant with love
And integrity
Are especially attractive to
Black holes
The star feels an indescribable pull
Toward the black hole
Beyond its control
The black hole
Having lost its own light long ago
Feels overcome by a desire to consume,
Overpower, control and devour the star
To have it
To own it
To claim it
To take credit for discovering it
Even creating it
The black hole becomes so obsessed that
It is convinced of its own
Self-authored mythology
The black hole is intriguing to the star
At first
Receiving special attention
Being noticed and recognized in the midst of
An expansive galaxy dotted with billions of other twinkling lights
But little by little
As the star is drawn closer to the black hole
By unseen forces
It begins to lose its energy, vitality
And light
Until all at once
It is struck with the devastating realization that
It’s about to be extinguished by a terrible darkness
Its only chance at survival is to muster its last
Remaining stores of light energy
To shoot clear across the sky
Away from the black hole
Into a celestial sea of velvet darkness that cradles
Its light like a buoy
Floating there in the great open sea
In the relative safety of dark but peaceful waters
Before long
Other stars of similar brilliance and luminosity
Begin to make their way over
Floating in their effervescent buoys
They eventually create one giant flotilla of
Light and stardust
Perhaps that’s what a comet is actually
An enormous mass of light energy, stardust, and brilliance
A collective of love and integrity
Tiny specks on their own
But together
One massive love flotilla rocketing
Through space and time
Away from the black holes of
Dominance, bloated ego, and hatred
Growing bigger
More spectacular and more powerful
With each speck of stardust
It picks up along the way
With its collective internal power
The comet accelerates
Taking its beloveds
On the ride of their lives
To places they’ve never even imagined
Places that don’t yet exist
Until they’re witnessed
By the ones courageous enough
To go and find them
Jaclyn Edds Konczal | February 25, 2022