It’s an entire universe. It’s not just you or your apartment. It’s not your life and your friends. This town does not belong to you, this state does not know you. You are not defined by your country, nor are you spoken for by your leaders. It’s an entire universe.

When you cry, the sound is muffled by tragedies you cannot fathom. The moisture is so insignificant that your body doesn’t miss it, the earth doesn’t notice it. Your wondering floats up into the clouds where it meets a billion other worries and a trillion other wonders and they dance and play and laugh and sing. They look down upon you and giggle. They talk about how selfish you are. How little you understand about the universe.

When you ache, the pain you feel is absorbed in the margins of life. There is no ceremony, no pomp or circumstance. The wind blows moments through the trees and into the sky where they disappear like everything before and everything after.

This is an entire universe. It’s a painting. We are not even a color. We are not even a stroke. If we fade or chip or float softly to the floor, if we get swept up in the whirlwind and drift away silently, that is all there will be. Silence.

It’s an entire universe you know. She is busy. Her ache is real. She catches the aches that are absorbed along her margins, too many to sort, too overwhelming to address. She scoops the laughing wonderment from the clouds and tosses it into the night sky, where it dots the darkness with light. She stares upon the canvas and one big wonder, like a single red balloon, floats above her head. Why do they not see it? Why do they feel so different, so important, so alone? They are so small, so one, so same. They are blurred together. They are merely the moments. There is no direction of progression, digression, transgression that does not need them all.

It’s an entire universe, you see. It’s not you or me. It’s not she or he. It’s a sum of laughter, an average of tears. It’s a fabric of quilted thoughts, sewn together by sadness, anger, wonderment, and confusion. It’s not about you. It’s about the universe.