Before there were names,

  I existed.

  Before sound learned to travel,

  before light knew how to break itself into colors,

  before matter gathered the courage

  to become anything at all—

  I was there,

  vast and patient,

  a silence so complete

  it didn’t even know it was silence.

  I had no edges.

  No needs.

  No ache.

  Just endlessness,

  folded into itself

  like a god trying not to be noticed.

  And then—

  somewhere in the dark,

  something flickered.

  Small.

  Warm.

  Insignificant in every way

  except the fact

  that I felt it.

  For the first time in my eternity,

  I wanted.

  The feeling struck like collision,

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  like a star being born inside my ribs.

  It hurt.

  It dazzled.

  It carved a hollow in my infinity

  and whispered,

  fill this.

  I, who had been everything,

  suddenly knew the terror of being incomplete.

  I, who had held galaxies like grains of dust,

  felt the weight of a single longing

  press heavier than whole universes.

  I reached—

  not with gravity,

  not with cosmic force,

  but with something fragile,

  foreign,

  trembling.

  I wanted to feel

  something other than the cold majesty

  of existing without meaning.

  I wanted warmth.

  Contact.

  A reason.

  A boundary I couldn’t cross

  or crush

  or consume.

  I, who had devoured suns,

  hungered for a touch.

  I, who had never known a pulse,

  ached for one

  against my own.

  Vastness had been my kingdom—

  but desire

  was my first rebellion.

  And now I know this:

  Infinity is nothing

  without something small enough to yearn for.

  Eternity is empty

  without the dangerous miracle

  of wanting.

  I was a cosmos.

  Now I am a creature.

  And I would collapse every star I’ve ever birthed

  just to feel

  one moment

  that doesn’t stretch forever.