the collapsing world around us

it used to bother me that everything falls apart.
you look at all the things you love and cherish,
and somewhere deep inside you know
you will one day lose them all.
extinction cycles will come and go, seas rise and fall,
and even the sun will one day wear itself out
crumbling into itself in a final cosmic act of surrender.
every day i see more things i love
slip into the distant past, obscured forever
beneath the still, silent waters of our consciousness.
the deteriorating worlds i live in,
populated only by memories and
scarred by years of neglect and misery,
they comfort me. they
speak to that part within me that knows
all the inevitable things that await us.
through their soft whispers, i have learned
things that i cannot even express. i have seen
what this world will look like without us,
and have glimpsed all the things
that lie in wait beyond.
i am not afraid, nor do i greive.
when you lose the fear of loss and pain and death,
when instead of turning away from them,
you hold them close to your heart,
there is nothing left that can stop you.
each of these corroded corridors now lie within me,
as i am now forever linked to them -
and their weakness has become my strength.
try as you might, you cannot wound me
for all your cuts and lacerations are what is temporary,
and what i am will last long after this shell is gone.
when you ache, when you're afraid,
when you are alone, remember me.
remember that i have lived through death itself,
and that i will be there for you, if you look
somewhere out there in the collapsing world around us.