Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about life and a lot about death. 

Introspection getting the best of me, the universe swallowing my thoughts and I into a whirlpool of an existential crisis heavier than gravity, weighing me down, compressing my lungs as I gasp for my breath. 

Did you know that Carina translated from Italian means beloved?
Or that above us in the southern sky shines the Carina Nebula Constellation, home to the second brightest star in the night sky?

I guess that makes me a beloved cluster of stars destined to illuminate through the darkness.

If so, When I die will my ashes, sprinkled across the evening ocean waves, reflect back like luminous speckles of stardust upon the darkened sable sea, mirroring the vast cosmos above?

But will I 
do enough,
be enough, 
love enough, 
see enough 
hurt enough
live enough

to be worthy of such a grandiose farewell?

I want to be remembered by those I've left behind by the memories of our time together. Thoughts and recollections sprinkled across time in the way the crisp autumn smells, the fold of a book, the clank of a pan in the kitchen, almond butter on toast.

I want them to see me in the emotions I made them feel, to know that my heart was always genuine and open with love. That they were important in my life, a piece in the puzzle of myself that I was completing.

Will I radiate and dazzle with the eloquence of a dream? Cast in the shadows of a blush and coral reverie where your self reflection is not distorted, envisioning your life in shades of gold and amber.

I will become the freckles of flames that kiss our night sky, decorating the bridge of its nose with clusters of soft pecks from my celestial lips.

For I will be stardust, meant to shine.