Death of Stars

by Karen Menzel

Crushing gravity
Extinguishing life
Consuming all light
Death of stars

Passage through to nothing

Selfish and consuming
Eating eating everything
Filling the void of space/vacuum
With something other than
Endless sucking cold

Hang from a brightening arc of stars
Sandwiched between light and dark,
Past and future

A singularity, inexorable, beckons
Solitude and silence, each breath a millennium
Time itself stretches

Rush headlong into the void
Ready to discover what it holds
In the fullness of time

Image by EHT Collaboration –
European Southern Observatory

Karen Menzel

Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer), MFA Stonecoast, teaches for Iowa State University and is an active member of SFWA. Her poetry has appeared in Abyss & Apex, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, Eye to the Telescope, and Strange Horizons among others.

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