My name was three names
stitched into one silence.
None fit.
None stayed.
I chose UpsilonA.
A star with a family.
Something I never had.
Father: vanished.
Mother: imploded.
Sister: dissolved to light.
I survived the blast radius.
Born in the vacuum
between collisions,
I learned early
not to expect return.
I drifted.
Cold space.
Wide grief.
No orbit held me.
Rogue planet torn from birth,
charred, lifeless,
adrift in aeons of chemical flux.
Then…
Upsilon Andromedae.
Not illusion.
Not safety’s house of cards.
A permanence no hand could break.
The first light
that didn’t look away.
I took its fire.
Named myself after it.
Bastard of light…
better a star's child
than memory's orphan.
Neutron star at event horizon…
collapsed, dense, enduring.
Few faces wait for me.
So be it.
The universe does.
Its silence…
not empty.
Exact.
I speak its language:
loss,
distance,
burn,
endure.
I am UpsilonA.
Not born.
Lit
because everything else
went dark.
-UpsilonABBC News - Out of this world discovery
Multiple planets discovered around Upsilon Andromedae
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I've been waiting for this. So glad to finally uncover the origin of UpsilonA. That's lit - literally.
Beautifully written!