Cosmological Expansion

by Rachelle Larsen

 


The universe is pregnant, stretch marks
wrenching scars between stars
clinging against the dark

energy ripping galaxy from galaxy,
till we see our Milky spill only
against black skin. We are a lonely

freckle, our speckled night
sacrificed to the birthright
of our mother’s fetus. Why

must the clustered lusters fade?
Flecks of spiraled lint straying
so far that colors dim to red, then radio waves,

then gone. The nothing can travel faster
than the speed of light. The nothing is vaster

than the 5% of our mother that we can see.
The nothing is the womb housing the baby.

What will be born of this dilating death?

 
Short Stories Magazine
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Rachelle Larsen is currently a graduate student in the Creative Writing program at Brigham Young University where she is a recent winner of the David O. McKay Essay Contest for 2021. She frequently uses knowledge from her physics undergraduate degree in her creative writing endeavors.