What Am I, Just Say The Word

Some might call it the will of God,

the innermost core of our existence,

but dark matter,

measurable only by its grasp of matter,

was alone,

perhaps even lonely,

and matter was without form.

Before anything had a name,

the universe leaned forward

and held its breath—

a vast, trembling hush

where dark matter was solitary, if there was any other it knew it not,

invisible,

unspoken,

while ordinary matter, a void,

every unborn particle

pressed tight against the edge

of what it longed to become,

like a bowstring drawn so far

it sang in the dark, an imagined shimmer, gathered there—

not light, not sound—

only raw, naked yearning:

a melody still locked inside the silence,

a horizon aching for the first footfall,

a promise no tongue had ever tasted.

Envisioned galaxies pressed closer,

hearts hammering in unison,

already burning for the spark

that would set their cores ablaze.

Even time itself paused, an hour glass yet turned,

a silver thread trembling,

like a sealed letter

never delivered from a soul not yet born.

There was no command.

No thunder.

No decree.

Only a quiet, desperate invitation

hanging in the void—

a key trembling in an empty hand,

an empty stage lit by a single unseen lamp

waiting for the first word

that would tear the curtain wide open.

And all of creation shook

with the soft, ferocious ache

of almost-becoming—

as if the cosmos itself

stood raw and exposed

on the threshold of its own birth,

radiating a hunger so fierce

it had collapsed into the darkest black holes,

folded into eternity’s deepest longing—

the whole universe

quivering at the edge of release.

And God said, “Let there be light honeybun, I wanna look at cha.”

And it was so.

—

Dark matter, still alone in its invisibility,

stretched its silent arms

across the newborn expanse,

holding the wild, expanding universe together

with a grip that never slackened,

never asked for thanks.

While galaxies raced outward

and stars flared into being,

it stood its ground in the dark—

desperate, steadfast,

the unseen scaffolding of everything.

And all the while,

with a courage no light could measure,

it began to press its own inner core

upward through the void,

slowly, fiercely,

until that hidden heart

broke the surface

as life itself—

green, breathing,

reaching for the very light

it had helped to hold in place.

—

Then came the deep knowing:

Life awoke to itself

and saw, for the first time,

its own infinite uniqueness—

each breath, each pulse,

each fleeting arrangement of atoms

utterly singular,

never to be repeated

across the whole of time.

That self-knowledge

was written into the sands of time,

grain by irreversible grain,

flowing steadily

through the hourglass of radioactivity—

the quiet decay of isotopes

marking every second

that uniqueness had existed,

every second it would never return.

In that slow, luminous fall of sand,

the universe finally learned

what it had been becoming all along:

a single, unrepeatable moment

aware of its own brief, perfect light.

—

Through already seemingly infinite iterations—

stars born and spent,

worlds risen and cooled,

lives begun and ended—

the same quiet desperation returned,

clinging with both hands

to record and cherish every fragment

before it slipped away.

Inevitability stood behind every joy,

unblinking,

patient as the half-life of the longest isotope.

Yet hope never left.

It lived inside the very awareness of death

that shone forth through life itself—

a clear, hard light

that made every moment sharper,

every uniqueness more precious,

every record more fiercely kept.

And so the cosmos continued,

desperate, inevitable, and still hoping,

writing its own brief names

into the sands

one more time.

—

And beyond the last grain of sand,

beyond the final half-life,

beyond the last recorded name,

imagination reaches farther still—

not with certainty,

not with proof,

but with the same raw yearning

that once filled the formless dark.

It pictures what no isotope can measure:

a silence deeper than the first,

a light that needs no star,

a uniqueness that does not end

when the hourglass runs empty.

Whether that beyond is another beginning,

or a rest without return,

or something no living mind can hold,

the imagination keeps the door ajar—

and the universe,

still quivering after all this time,

leans forward once more

and listens.

Now let us pray.