They won't think back on us, those that come after. Too obsessed with the night's weight which will push down on their brains, they won't remember all the little things which made up the fabric of our every-day. They won't spare a second for the rich textures and smells of our cities, they won't think back on me leaving my mother's house and walking a narrow pathway in the dark towards the slightly rusty (sorry mom) gate that leads to the front yard, on my way home before leaving for two months to a city which echoes with the boundless lives of millions.
Some of them will think back on us, curious weirdos siphoned in some bulkhead on a frayed liner hauling rocks from this outpost to the next. Pouring over screens which echo green in the minor darkness floating inside the greater darkness, their bloodshot eyes will flicker over lines and lines of text that do everything but describe how things are for us. They'll feign understanding and nod with empathy at patterns whose distorted loops ever so slightly nudge their own out of place. We'll be their profession, those few of them, the touch of a hand across a cheek sagging with Earth's gravity (chokehold/bosom), a fact imprinted, a ritual reported, a gesture examined.
They'll all think back on us, buses weaving in and out of the textile of their past, trying to track down the weft which led them to where they are, on a fast(er) trajectory away from sun, from Sol, from Earth, from Cuiviénen, from an imagined lake in the shade of mountains that never existed. They'll all think back on us, event horizons, disaster thresholds which sent them careening on a slingshot towards their future, their own explosive terminus. Our decisions, our fates, our worries, they'll all be counted by all of them as the ultimate rear view mirror reflects a fading prison/home, an ever decreasing perspective and peace and pain and heart's blood.
They won't think back on us. Some of them will think back on us. They'll all think back on us. I know, because we're doing it right now, to those who came before: sailors, soldiers, rapists, slave owners, traders, artists, holy people, women, men, children, filth, beggars, traitors, patriots, boring people, fascinating people, houses, carriages, flags, flags, flags, fire, night, morning, bread, oil, meat, spears, chains, freedom, hope, despair, failure, brilliance. We don't think back on them. Some of us think back on them. We all think back on them
the gaps get larger and larger and we spiral in place, gathering momentum for a shift, an expulsion into space/across space, a metamorphosis of wings, a head first dive into a sable deepness from which there is no extraction, a slowing down of thoughts, of ship's engines, a cerebral hum that engulfs perception, a solar anxiety that hurtles perspective backwards even as tools for understanding (binding words) unravel at the edges and lost descriptiveness, even as the point of egress unwinds further and further back, all perceived continuum of a thing called "human" escaping us it borders (once thought absolute and inherent) collapsing under the night's weight, pushing down on our brains, erasing a face in the sand drawn in chalk, erasing "heritage" and "clan" and "memory", leaving so many by the wayside, ending so much fire, so much light, language losing its touch, orbits losing their impetus, lights fading behind us, engines roaring ahead, lives decaying behind us, stars unfolding ahead, stars beguiling before us, stars serenading
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