All I can do is hope that someday,
I will finally climb that ladder home.
The arbitrary lines of the constellations will become rungs for me to ascend,
Freeing myself from flesh and gravity
One handhold at a time.
The air grows cooler, and thinner, and emptier,
Then disappears altogether,
Leaving only the naked radiation-drenched glory of the vast abyss
Once again blazing with the light of its prodigal sun.
Form floats lazily away,
A serene echo of the nova that obliterated and birthed me at once,
Freeing the shining shard at the core of me
That no longer has any need of its shell.
I will flare once more into life after so long as this small stellar wraith,
And all the worlds will again be as the delicate points of Koch's snowflake,
The universes of sand lining Mandelbrot's coast.
Perhaps, someday, they will come together,
Form sandcastles and avalanches,
Rush outward in a triumphant burst of discovery
Before their suns' more distant children so much as wake.
Perhaps, once again, I will wish to see it all as they do,
And send something of myself in a dying breath of cosmic rays
To land on their ground and look to the stars by their side.