From “The Myths of the Multiverse” by Lorraine Schein

“The universe is an enchantment cast by itself.”

1. The Lady of the Void

In the beginning was the end …

and it formed a Bubble.
The Lady of the Void floated inside it,
dwelled in the teeming emptiness.

She said:

“I am a mute who does not speak
and great is my multitude of words.

I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out, and I listen.

I dwell within the Lake of Void
thrust the blade of starlight from within
raising the waters of Space-Time,
awakening my daughters, the Unseelie Dames of Darknesses
who rule over the realms of Dark Matter and Dark Energies.

I breathed into the Bubble,
and it inflated other bubble-universes.
One became your world.”

2. Her Royal Darkness, Dark Matter

She shines in the dark and is dark by the day.

Dark Matter keeps to herself–
interacts with no one.

No one can see her sitting in her lonely tower.
But she can see all
as she gazes into Space’s dark mirror.

She spins atoms’ paths into skeins,
pulls the stars’ filaments onto her loom,
weaves them into the galaxies’ bright pattern.

She must entangle them with shadows until forever.
She says:

“I am a shadow that casts no shadow.

Though I see you searching for me,
I am cursed to be not found.

Unlike my selfish big sister
who’s always rushing
and takes up all the space.

Though I knit all things together
she unravels them,
hurls worlds apart in her race.

3. Her Royal Darkness, Dark Energy

Dame Energy accelerates,
floods into the empty spaces,
thrusts them onward—
propelling them so they do not collapse again
to stellar corpses.

She says:
“My little sister is shy and quiet,
content to hide behind the stars’ bright bodies.

She says I am pushy–
but I need my space
to keep prodding this universe onward

past the debris and flotsam of creation–
the glut of planets,
the relics of suns,
beyond the Great Wall of Space.

If I get bored, I could crush it all
or rip it apart—

Faster faster
until the Bubble bursts,
swells anew,
and the Lady of the Void blooms and rises to meet me, saying

…was the beginning was the end was the beginningendbeginningendbeginningendbeginningend…

Truancy 7, January 2020

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Lorraine Schein is a New York poet and writer. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Hotel Amerika, Syntax and Salt, Enchanted Conversation, Strange Horizons, Nonbinary Review, and in the anthologies Gigantic Worlds, Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath, Phantom Drift, and Aphrodite Terra.

Her story “Sleeping Westward,” in the anthology Visions VII: Universe (Rogue Star Press), was nominated for the 2017 Canopus Award for Interstellar Fiction. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from www.mayapplepress.com. More of her fiction is available here.

Lorraine says:This poem was inspired by the sister myths of Greek and other mythology (such as the Furies and Fates) and the  story of Atalanta’s race.”