space
the mirror is broken
and now there are two
suddenly light
paralyzed, floating from the bed
faces over you, indiscernible expressions
large eyes, cold metal against your skin
but every touch is comforting
you feel no fear as They examine you
checking your breathing, attaching the monitor
placing you in the bassinet
welcoming you to the world
outer
they found Him in repose on a small moon
lost in the asteroid belt, suit in tatters
features not human, but familiar
they sequenced His genome, preserved by the cold
and the magnetic field of the small planet—
not DNA or RNA, but something simpler, older
He existed before Earth did
the skull is on display in France
dark and jewelled and indescribable
and in Chile they have His hand
the fingernails just a little too long
withered but the flesh still cleaving
tattooed, rings glittering
fingers slightly curved
inner
when we drink with the ancients
we have a glimpse of what composes our minds
all of the delicate shards, strung up into a strange loop,
unwind and separate, the machine coming apart like
a pocket watch, screws and gears rolling everywhere
truth becoming incoherent and the little voice in your head
drowning in the heat death of your mind, before springing back
like protein folding, consciousness is a potential well
and language is a virus from outer space
or another dimension, a space perpendicular to our own
populated by beings of pure creativity
whose bodies are words made manifest,
spinning bismuth fractal echoes
who want nothing more than to teach us
how deep we really can go
temporal
with Their help we built mountains
gleaming monuments to stand forever
reminders of Their promise
to meet us again at the end of time
we ferried the dead into eternity
dessicated and then the salt removed
coated in resin and strips of cloth
wrapped and marked with prayers and a name
put in a box and hidden underground
where the walking world would not step
above stands a black monolith
bearing the inscription: "Here tread lightly
for we sleep, But not so soundly.
we are fragile And our voyage is long:
To preserve ourselves for resurrection
on Planet Jupiter"
do you want to join them in waiting?
to sit in a box for a while, or to become one with the air?
to get off the carousel, step up onto the pyre
leaving only the warmth on the saddle
and a small pile of ashes
knot
have They crossed the interstellar void,
our cousins simply checking up?
perhaps we are an inevitability of the fabric of the universe
sharing no lineage but like growing crystals
meeting in a cave after fifty thousand years
recognize one another as the same
or perhaps we, who slept so long, upon awaking
cracked open the Spacetime nut
and reaching back across the aeons
whispered to ourselves
so that we would not feel alone
space
staring into the void, small or large
is the mirror on the mountain
is a head upon a body
the mote of soul
on the surface of the fundament
the face of the waters
a clear
glass
eye