The Fate of Stars

What's the point of pursuing the appearance of immortality if we all die anyway?

All stars die. None will live forever.

Some spend their finite days preventing wrinkles and frays from appearing along the cosmic flesh of their bodies. One might drink a bottle of cyanide if it was labeled “eternal youth.” With enthralling words and speeches of personally graspable everlasting life the gullible are led like sheep to the slaughter.

The stars are not forever, nor can they be. They are ethereal yet will decay. Once the fire is gone, their insides will be smothered like a flame covered in ash. Not even the nuclear fuel of their hearts will keep their midnight bodies alive forever.

But they try.

Eventually they fail, and the stars who poisoned themselves to stay ageless still end up in the same grave as everyone else, but lonelier. Surgically molded bones rot and turn to cyclical dirt. No descendants light up their headstone with universal dust.

For they were obsessed with one thing alone. And their obsession died with them.

{cover art: Spring Scattering Stars by Edwin Blashfield}