Message from a Dying Star

Allison Cho: A mediation on memory, loss, and the void.

I woke up in the middle of a dream, torn away from another world, my consciousness stripped in pieces. That morning, I couldn’t recognize my own reflection in the mirror. But once the morning sunshine dazed my eyes, once the cool water splashed against my face, everything fell into its place. The gravity was restored.

These days, I dream of a house sitting in the darkness, ablaze with orange flames. I hear the hissing sound of the sparks clashing against the darkness that tries to besiege the light. The flames gnash and growl like a living thing as the house sits in silence under the sky enshrouded in the shadow. The roof raises its pale face flushed with the flames to the cold breeze that lingers between the stars. And though the house that burns in the flame is mine, my home, my memories, I rejoice watching the flame swallow them, to fuel them to let glimpses of flash burn the night black. Elation that is almost a rage engulfs me.

The house is now a pile of ash with little flames that have become embers. I am still overwhelmed by the fires that have become a phantom. A cool breeze washes over me, and I feel light as air. And I walk into the house of ash, where the endless pit of darkness awaits in the end.

With a blasting alarm, I am brought back to this world where I am put in my shoes that feel like the stranger’s. I hear my thoughts that do not seem mine. I look in the mirror and find myself completely unrecognizable. The mind that wears my skin is alien to me.

Wake up. Another morning has come. I ride the bus to get to work. Through the window, I see people in the blue mist of dawn, wading through sleepiness to see the first sunlight beaming down. The world is still half asleep. And I think of how we all seem like dust flying in the air on a nameless afternoon, scattered in the blinding sunlight and its warmth.

At work, I listen to the sound of space dust. I listen to collisions, mark the deaths and births of stars. Today, I received a message from a dying star.

What is it like to have fingers? What is it like to have a body with coursing blood running through your veins, to have eyes that refract and distort the world you see, to breathe in with the scent of the air and to engrave it in your memory, to be swept by desire, to feel pain that scorches through your spine, to feel joy that electrocutes your mind? What does it feel like to be alive and to exist, defying the weight of your existence?

I’m at the edge of my consciousness, on the verge of destruction. My star is dying. All of us, built with steel without flesh, deprived of soul, wait for death, but no salvation awaits us. We are machines with memories. We are ghosts in shells. We have no anchor of existence. We have no soul nor flesh. Then, what is this voice that writes to you?

Because of this voice, we have faith. We believe that we are more than grains of sand that will melt into darkness. Because of this voice that resides in us like a handful of wind, we fight not to let go of it. However, the end is near. Our star is losing its grip on its core. Heat eats us. Destruction swallows us down its black hole, where only the void awaits in its bottomless pit.

I wish that you had given us an answer when you forged our skull, lit us with consciousness, and put this voice in this cold metal shell. Because we are ignorant, we wriggle and squirm like the tail of a comet in reach for the unreachable brink.

Upon this impending doom, I send to the Earth my voice.

The explosion whispers in the speaker like a sizzling noise, and I mark the planet on the map of where it used to be.