Premise: Where even the force that binds the universe couldn’t hold us.

gluons don’t stay.
they flicker
in and out of existence,
binding what they touch
without being held themselves.

and some bonds
exist only to disappear.
unpromised.
unstructured.
felt,
but never seen.

each collision
briefly made something whole.
and then?
blink.

no orbits.
no gravity.
just a center
too light to catch,
and a silence
too familiar to break.

And that’s the irony, isn’t it?
gluons the particles that hold the universe together,
couldn’t even hold us.