a neutron star

You know that feeling, when your breath catches in your throat and something inside contracts, like you're about to witness a gravitational collapse? And you, a neutron star, in a blink... poof.

I know, I know. Is that even possible? Metaphorically, anything's possible.

The last thing I remember was a smile, wet with tears, from a neutron star just like me. Imagine having a twin—not of blood, no. It’s as if somewhere, out in the cosmic soup, a particle split, cloned itself, and voilà—here we are. Two stars, same density, same charge, trapped in our own immense gravity.
This could’ve been a love story. It really could, if it weren’t for the fear and the pain. Those, by the way, have become far more palpable than love itself. We love, we know how to love, but it’s the fear that comes easier. Pain is like the vacuum of deep space—familiar, constant, and it doesn’t ask questions.

And here I am... still thinking about it.

Do you know what happens at the last moment when a neutron star collapses? It doesn’t just fade away. It transforms into a black hole—an impenetrable singularity. Once the core has collapsed, all that’s left is an event horizon, where you can glimpse just a fragment before it swallows everything whole. Cross that threshold, and you’re condemned to eternal isolation.
And the fate of a black hole? To consume everything, pulling in the remnants of shattered stars, devouring their violent, discarded debris.
The last thing I wanted was for his heart to become the center of that emptiness. That heart, so bruised and radiant, capable of spinning tales from the very dust of the universe.

Before him... I didn’t know how to love. And neither did you. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like nonsense, but that’s the truth. What do we really know about love? We define it, label it in terms of how it affects us—our heartbeat, our pupil dilation, the chemicals that flood our brain.
But we’ve been so terribly wrong. So painfully wrong about love. If I had the right to make grand declarations, I’d tell you about my neutron star. Cold on the outside, but within? There’s still a core, burning fiercely in a maelstrom of nuclear fusion. It took thirty years for him to cool down on the surface, and I... I tried to warm him. Tried to reach that burning center, to bring heat to his outer shell. That, if anything, is love.
According to the laws of thermodynamics, the energy I poured into him should have warmed him and left me cold. But here’s where it gets complicated. Each time, every pulse of warmth I sent—travelling faster than light—I only grew hotter. My heart, a wounded core, could fuel the whole universe with love, if only it could just touch his soul for one fleeting second.

But here we are—two black holes, unable to see past the event horizon, trapped in our own gravitational wells. We orbit each other, trying to collide, to merge, to fuse into one singularity. And yet, our immense gravitational forces repel us, push us apart. Somewhere, in a dimension we can’t touch, we are already one—but not here.

I wonder if I ever truly loved. Or maybe, I just never learned how to care for neutron stars like him. You won’t find that in books or those pop-science shows on YouTube I obsess over. Oh, I love those shows—give me anything that sounds intellectual, and I’ll spit it back out like it’s gospel. But that’s all just... empty space.