The Law

This law that governs is buried so deeply;
it rarely rises to question.

But in smaller worlds, in the world of the giving, it pours over every moment,
as ruling reminder to all of its power.

In my small world, I’ve given myself, like Michelangelo’s marble, to the masterpieces of others. Chipping away chunk by chunk, purveying my pieces all over the universe like sand through an endless sieve.

But despite all that’s taught in my world--that pure and true giving need not be requited--
I am silently hoping, wanting, wishing.

Awaiting return in my small world of giving.

Proud to think of myself as a patron, provider of progress to far distant planets; the days and hours and minutes of life in my small world of giving go gladly.

But in larger worlds, in the world of the taking, these meaningful minutes dissolve into nothing. Flying far, up, and out of my atmosphere, into the bottomless pit at its core.

The core feeds on my Sun, swallows my light, abandons my small world of flowers to wilt. Sustaining its insatiable hunger, it creeps through cracks in the cosmos, silent, unseen. It lives in the shadows; in unmet expectations; between the minutes that fill my small world's days. The minutes and moments that scatter my soul to the edges of gravity’s embrace, and leave it resigned to ask only one question:

What is left of me?

But to ask stops the spin of this small world of giving.

To ask is to question the governing law:

What’s given is meant to be taken.