if I shock you
I am sorry--
it’s the emotional static
built up on the surfaces of my insides
from being rubbed the wrong way
too many times, and over, and over
if I seem to spark
and crackle
at the slightest contact
I am sorry--
it’s the emotional static
my positive
and negative
are imbalanced
my brain is catching cosmic background ratiation
and my thoughts feel misplaced by it
and meaningless
and jumbled.
it’s just the emotional static
that I can’t quite seem
to discharge.
the stars in my eyes (sparkling), in my heart (throbbing), in my brain (obscuring), can’t seem to communicate with one another. they twinkle benignly, a good light just sometimes misplaced
the dogs behind my place howl at sirens in dissonant acknowledgement
as if the emergency vehicles are some sort of long lost relative singing a distant song of tragedy
(one not about the moon.)
I cannot shake these small worries. they build up within my chest, they swell there uncomfortably, humidly. they call out into the pit of my stomach and let the echoes endlessly bounce around.
nothing gold can stay,
but time stretches out before us
and the horizon stretches out before that
and as the sun hits those hills they glow vibrant with the gold to come
I’ll be back for you in twenty minutes--
Just enough to sit beneath the tree
And laze around in the last remnants of summer sun.
I’ll be back for you in an hour and a half—
Long enough for you to amble through a field of grass,
Grazing its tips with those of your fingers,
Witnessing sundown and starrise and the evening quiet
And chirruping crickets and animals’ night-eyes in the black.
I’ll be back for you in two hours and thirty-five minutes,
By which time you’ll have perched yourself on a hill
High enough above the treeline to drink the milky way with your eyes,
High enough that you feel surrounded by stars and engulfed in the universe.
I’ll be back for you in a little bit more.
Should I come back? Or are you better off with your hands laced in the grass
And your toes bare, and your heart free, and your head consumed by love of the world?
“I will be dead one day,” you think to yourself. It’s a fleeting thought, quite unimportant in the current situation, hardly one that seems valid to you at the moment. You don’t plan to die for quite awhile. And although the thought holds a certain grimness and foretells a certain-yet-uncertain fate, the reality of the statement doesn’t really puncture the flow of other thoughts drifting through that warm grey matter between your ears.
But whether or not you fully comprehend it, you will be dead one day. The stardust that was once your eyes and hands and teeth will fall away, leaving only dry bones and dry skin and dry teeth behind to sink into the moist ground within your grave. The parts of you that were once alive, visible on the outside, routinely judged by others, will no longer matter. Together with your insides, they will feed the worms.
You will be dead one day. All judgments about you will soon pass. Most of the mistakes you made during the course of your life will be rendered insignificant. For awhile, people will remember how you made them feel and recount to each other all the ways you affected their lives. But you will be dead. Over time, your mistakes won’t be the only thing that’s forgotten. Moss will collect on the sunlit headstone planted firmly in the ground above your bones, the people you love will resume their busy lives, and the world will continue to revolve and evolve just as it always has. The universe will continue to expand. Everything that is not dead will go on.
You will be dead one day-- and at that point there will be no turning back. That’s the scary part: the absolute permanence of a murky, unknown future, the complete opacity of that infinity, the question of whether there really is post-material life. Will you merely cease to exist, your soul dissipating into the nothingness? Or will some part of you that is no longer in the presence of your dry bones and decomposing stardust—the cold, decaying contents of your grave-- continue on?
