They say the only country in deep space

is where the last refrain is in a traveler’s eyes

light

               the laughter of a black hole

               that escaped its own darkness.

I believed in the divine as the only answer

and sacrifice

               as the only means of acceptance

yet

               I learned to love the silence

left behind in rubble and waste, an observatory

of prayers

               laced with curiosity of the eternal

               where suffering begins in stillness

and ends in motion, as if

perhaps

               memory becomes

               a gravity worthy of faith in God

where before everything

there was only Existence