In searching for something to keep me, I found the universe to be wanting

--of breadth. 

If all that is not for me, then what could be?

What do I know of this, I hear an atonal scoff.

I who haven’t even lived twenty years, 

but who thinks she can -talk of the cosmos’ width, length, and volume.

Pause

Volume: formula length times breadth times height  recite informatively

Grin, pause, then continue

And if the universe’s volume isn’t good enough for me, well, then what is?

The fire in the belly of the greatest star won’t keep me warm?

... or maybe it’s just not right.

Maybe the volume of the whole wide universe is just too loud. 

and I need to turn it down, or risk going deaf. 

Maybe I should stop looking out and look ‘round instead.

Around. 

*recite like a poem*

 Round, like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face,

And the world is like an apple wheeling silently in space…

The volume of the world isn’t length times breadth times height, 

cause it’s not a rectangular prism                 *point with finger to punctuate John-Mulaney-style

-- and I’m sorry to all the flat-earthers-- 

It’s a sphere, full of glory, rolling like the richest language off the tongue. Roll ‘r’s

--This world has such a voice on it, such rich color, such glorious tone. 

With a volume of four-thirds pi r-cubed,

 so blessed as to be just right to fill my ears with sound

and it resonates.

Get softer, use Poetry Voice ^TM 

Blue as music and two times as silent from space as a speaker with the sound off, it sings to me. 

It sings, and I am helpless to do anything but sit back and lie spellbound, 

Gazing up at the heavens that surround us, 

keeping us warm like diamonds scattered in velvet...

And the universe, I found it wanting,

because its brea(d)th is cold. 

But Earth’s breath calls me like a song, 

and I call it back, ‘contentment’ --and in searching for something to keep me, I found the world. 

And I want for nothing.